American kids getting high on prescription drugs

[cynatnite]

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Teenagers are increasingly experimenting with legal drugs like OxyContin, widely known as "hillbilly heroin," and Vicodin, often bought online or taken from medicine cabinets, even before trying marijuana or alcohol, health officials say.

"Last year, painkillers were the No. 1 drug for people taking drugs for the first time," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the government's National Institutes of Health.

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Among the most dangerous experiments are "pharming parties" where children meet after scouring family medicine cabinets and dumping what they find into a bowl. They stir things up, dip in, randomly pluck drugs out and swallow them.

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Teenagers are not the only prescription drug abusers. The number of people over the age of 55 treated for abuse of opiates, for example, has nearly doubled between 1995 and 2002, government statistics show. In 2003, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh admitted becoming hooked on OxyContin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060318/us_nm/life_drugs_dc