The Prevalence of Prescription Drug Abuse
Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in North America. It is also a growing problem in other areas such as the European Union and Africa. Millions of people are abusing drugs that most people assume are safe. The United States has the highest level of opioid (painkiller) use in the world, followed by Canada. According to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the classes of prescription drugs most commonly abused are: opioid pain relievers, such as fentanyl, Vicodin, or Oxycontin; stimulants for treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), such as Adderall, Concerta, or Ritalin; and central nervous system (CNS) depressants for relieving anxiety, such as Valium or Xanax.
How Does Prescription Drug Abuse Affect Teens?
Despite the mental health challenges that teens face, drug use among young people has declined. According to the 2021 Monitoring the Future Survey of young people from eighth to twelfth grade, the trend was across the board: vaping and marijuana use declined among all age groups. According to NIDA, the use of any illicit drug other than marijuana was cut nearly in half—including the nonmedical use of amphetamines, tranquilizers, and prescription opioids. One of the unintended consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was the disruption of teens’ ability to obtain or use drugs outside of parental supervision, but researchers also say doctors have become more cautious when prescribing opioids to teens and have limited the number of refills in favor of other pain management methods.
However, among twelve- to seventeen-year-olds, nearly five percent of young people have abused prescription drugs annually, according to the U.S. National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics. This is slightly lower than the percentage among all age groups. Among high school seniors, 8 percent reported using Vicodin, an opioid, while 6.5 percent reported using Adderall, an amphetamine. Accessibility was a key reason that teens misuse prescription drugs—52 percent reported that prescription drugs were easy to get from their family’s medicine cabinets.
Teen athletes are also at risk for misusing or abusing prescription medication. A landmark 2022 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that high school seniors who played contact sports like hockey or football were about 50 percent more likely to abuse prescription stimulants in the decade after graduation, compared to students who didn’t play those types of sports. The study authors collected data on more than 4,770 high school seniors. Some students played contact sports, while others did semi-contact sports like baseball or field hockey, or non-contact sports like track or swimming. Researchers followed the study participants for ten years until their late twenties. They discovered that 31 percent of high school seniors had misused prescription drugs at least once at ages seventeen or eighteen. Among those in contact sports, 11 percent of seniors misused prescription stimulants. The rate of misusing stimulants increased to 18 percent when the study participants were twenty and twenty-one years of age.
Prescription drug abuse may be hard to detect for both the person abusing medication and their friends and family. If the drugs initially came from a doctor, many people assume that they are safe or not addictive. If someone gets a prescription filled at a legal drugstore, they may not even think of themselves as having a problem. But their addiction is real and often has devastating effects on their lives and families. Moreover, abusing, selling, and sharing prescription drugs is a crime, and there can be legal consequences of supporting a drug habit.
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome
The U.S. National Library of Medicine defines neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) as “a group of problems that occur in a newborn who was exposed to addictive illegal or prescription drugs while in the mother’s womb.” The drugs pass from the mother’s bloodstream to the placenta, the organ that supplies food and oxygen to the developing fetus. The baby is born addicted to drugs and may suffer withdrawal symptoms. In recent years, the abuse of opioids (prescription pain relievers) has caused an alarming increase in the number of NAS hospital births in North America. Drugs that can cause NAS include amphetamines; barbiturates; benzodiazepines; cocaine; marijuana; and opiates/narcotics such as heroin, methadone, and codeine.