Reply #29: Biden has spoken on it ;) [View All]

... It is not always the illegal drug - smuggled across our border in the dead of night or grown in the far fields of Afghanistan - that parents need to worry about their kids using. Sometimes it's the substance sitting on the shelf in their medicine cabinets.

As Senators who have worked tirelessly to stem the tide of illicit drug and excessive alcohol use, we are alarmed by an emerging scourge: teens abusing medicines such as prescription and over-the-counter drugs. This raiding of the medicine cabinet demands national attention.

According to the annual Monitoring the Future survey, a prominent University of Michigan study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of teens and young adults, teens' use of illegal drugs has declined over the past five years. But that good news has been accompanied by other bad news. Improper and excessive use of legally available drugs has risen sharply during the same period. Recent studies indicate that 1 in 10 teens - 4.5 million young adults - have used prescription drugs non-medically. According to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more people age 12 or older recently started misusing prescription pain relievers than started using marijuana. ...