Substance abuse report a wake-up call
Thursday, December 18, 2008 1:13 AM PST
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Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services this week issued a mixed report on substance abuse in the state. The agency’s 16th annual survey of drug and alcohol abuse trends shows a decline in smoking and methamphetamine abuse. But adult drinking rates are at their highest level this decade and the abuse of prescription drugs is rising.
The most attention-grabbing news in this report concerns the illegal use of prescription drugs. Washington now ranks sixth in the nation in the abuse of prescription pain relievers, behind Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. That ranking may well serve as a wake-up call for citizens in much of the state. Cowlitz County got its wake-up call more than a year ago, when area law enforcement rounded up nearly two dozen local residents suspected in the illegal sale of prescription drugs.
The 2007 arrests put this drug problem high on the county’s radar screen. We soon learned that the problem was affecting mostly young people. The majority of those arrested were in their early twenties and most of the people buying the prescription drugs illegally were teenagers in middle schools and high schools. We also learned from a Department of Social and Health Services that prescription drug abuse among Cowlitz County teens is high relative to the rest of the state.
This abuse of prescription pain relievers can have deadly consequences. Jeffrey Sullivan, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, reported in 2007 that 40 people had died in Cowlitz County in the previous 2 1/2 years from overdoes of prescription drugs. That was more than double the number of deaths due to illegal street drugs over the same period, according to Sullivan.
Culture plays a part in this problem. Teenagers have been raised on a steady diet of advertisements and adult behavior that says there is a pill for virtually every ailment. Prescription medications are viewed as safe and healthful, which of course they can be when taken as prescribed. The medications also are readily available in many, if not most, home medicine cabinets. More than three in five teens nationwide say prescription pain relievers are easy to steal from parents, according to a National Drug Control Policy survey.
There are a least a couple ways to combat this problem locally. One is to make prescription drugs less available to young people. We could do that by following the lead of a small southwest Oregon community. Winston, Ore., established an unused pharmaceutical take-back program, in which residents are encouraged to bring their unused medicines to the local police department for proper disposal. In the program’s first month, citizens reportedly brought in enough Vicodin, Oxycodone and other prescription pain relievers to fill a 1 1/2-gallon bucket.
Another cost-effective tool available to the county is education — for both young people and adults. A strong effort to educate citizens on the proven hazards of tobacco use is thought to be largely responsible for the county’s declining smoking rates. No doubt, education would be helpful in combating the abuse of prescription drugs.
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