By Rick Nauert PhDSenior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 19, 2014
Teen prescription drug abuse programs have experienced mixed levels of effectiveness, ranging from big drops in drug abuse to no measurable effect.
The finding comes from a study of 11,000 teenagers by researchers at Duke and Pennsylvania State universities.
The best results came from pairing a school-based program with a home-based intervention, resulting in a 10 percent decrease in abuse rates.
By contrast, most school-based programs were ineffective when used by themselves, with just one exception.
While the results are sobering (no pun intended), the six-year study is among the first to measure the success and cost-effectiveness of prescription drug abuse prevention efforts.
Abuse of prescription opioids, a form of painkiller, is the fastest-growing form of illicit drug use in the country, affecting more than 12 million Americans and killing more people annually than heroin and cocaine combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As a result, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended restricting access to painkillers such as Percocet, Oxycontin, and Vicodin.
“These drugs are very available, and highly addictive,” said Max Crowley, Ph.D., an NIH Research Fellow at Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy.
“There’s a growing national debate about whether we should restrict access to these drugs, but at the same time, the drugs are hugely important for pain management. What’s being left out of the debate is the role of prevention.”
Crowley and his co-authors found that only one school-based program was effective when used by itself.
The Life Skills Training program resulted in 4 percent lower drug abuse rates, compared with a control group. The 18-session course teaches social skills that build competence and encourage assertiveness.
“Life Skills Training was also among the most cost-effective programs studied, costing an average of $15 per child,” Crowley said. “By contrast, the study notes that prescription drug abusers cost society an average of $7,500 each for treatment and other expenses, by conservative estimates.”
Life Skills was among four prevention programs the researchers studied.
The team looked at 28 rural public school districts in Iowa and Pennsylvania, tracking students from grades 6 through 12. They examined a home-based program called Strengthening Families 10-14 and three school-based programs: Life Skills Training, Project Alert, and All Stars.
All four were “universal” programs that were offered to all teenagers in a given district.
The researchers analyzed pairs of demographically similar school districts. Within each pair, one community received a prevention program or programs, and the other did not.
The research team surveyed teenagers each year, asking teens to anonymously report whether they had ever used a prescription painkiller for nonmedical purposes. The authors then compared drug use levels in districts that received interventions versus those that did not.
In communities that received no intervention, a quarter of high school seniors reported having misused prescription painkillers.
The most substantial reductions in abuse rates occurred when the Life Skills program was combined with the Strengthening Families program. The All Stars intervention also yielded reductions when it was used alongside the Strengthening Families program.
Crowley said he hopes policymakers and educators will put the findings to use.
“Policymakers and other leaders are actively searching for efficient ways to curb prescription drug abuse,” Crowley said.
“These results give policymakers options regarding how to handle this growing epidemic.”
The War on Drugs is being fought against the wrong people. Prescription drugs kill more people than heroin and cocaine combined. On the other hand there’s marijuana which has cured some people of seizures, cancer, and various other ailments. Not to mention that it caused no deaths last year or at any other time in history. You would think that the FDA would advocate for it but instead it classifies marijuana as one of the most dangerous substances for human consumption. Sorry but I think it’s the FDA’s relationship with Big Pharma that is truly dangerous.
National Prescription Drug Take Back Day – Saturday, October 26, 2013 –
The National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.
TRENTON — Seeking to curb the unprecedented abuse of heroin and opiates in New Jersey, state lawmakers Thursday took the first step toward comprehensive reforms of the state’s approach to substance abuse treatment and prevention.
Experts from the medical field spent more than two hours testifying before the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, explaining the yawning gap between science and public policy, and offering recommendations on how to narrow it.
Some of the recommendations were simple enough that they could be implemented with an iPhone, but most others would take time and money.
But committee chairman Joseph F. Vitale, D-Middlesex, said opiate abuse in New Jersey has become a public health crisis and a pressing priority in recent months among legislators.
“People need to know that this is as important an issue in terms of health care as any other epidemic,” he said.
Experts were armed with enough statistics to prove it.
The state has had more than 700 opiate overdose deaths since 2009. Forty-six percent of treatment admissions last year were for heroin or opiates. Overdoses lead all accidental deaths in New Jersey, and of those, opiates have been involved in 75 percent, said Dr. Louis E. Baxter, the president and executive medical director of the Professional Assistance Program NJ, a drug and alcohol counseling services.
Camden, Essex, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties lead the way in overdose deaths, Baxter said.
With a little more than 6,000 beds for 72,000 people seeking treatment, there is a logjam seeking treatment for “this epidemic (that) has spread,” Baxter said.
He and other experts said there are fundamental flaws in New Jersey’s treatment options and access to them, which they suggested is an indictment of the nation’s approach to substance abuse.
Drug addiction is not about drugs, it’s about brains, said Susan E. Foster, the vice president and director of policy research and analysis at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. It must be diagnosed early, treated individually and monitored regularly for a long time, she said.
Foster, citing a 2005 study by the center, said 3 cents of every dollar was spent on substance-abuse prevention and treatment in New Jersey, while the remaining 97 cents went to “shovel up after the fact — in our jails, in our health care programs, in our schools, assistance programs and even our workforce.”
A “full treatment experience” — detox, medication, therapy — results in a success rate of about 80 percent and at far less cost, Baxter said. Gov. Chris Christie last week said it costs New Jersey roughly $24,000 to treat an addict through the state’s drug court program, but $49,000 to jail them for a year.
Treatment providers are another area with problems.
Less than 6 percent of treatment referrals come from health care providers, she said. Most referrals come from the criminal justice system, she said, “indicating our failure to prevent and treat the disease until the costly consequences occur.”
Foster said in the U.S. there is no reliable estimate on who is providing addiction care. There are few restrictions on who “can hang out a shingle and say ‘I’m providing addiction treatment,’ ” she said, adding that few medical professionals are well enough trained to provide treatment for addiction.
In New Jersey, as in most states, the largest number of people offering treatment are drug counselors, whose minimum requirements are a high school diploma or its equivalent, she said.
“Addiction care is largely disconnected from mainstream medical practice,” Foster said.
Baxter and Foster also recommended, among other things, requiring addiction education in all health care curriculums, participation in the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a campaign to educate the public on opiate abuse, and expanding insurance options to include long-term care.
Vitale, the committee chairman, said the meeting was the first step toward “comprehensive” changes to the state’s approach to substance abuse treatment. He said the Christie administration is eager to discuss options, but comprehensive change will be costly and time-consuming.
“We have to have a blueprint,” he said. “And to say that we can’t do it because of the money — we can do it, but it takes time.”
It’s been an epidemic in Ocean County this year, and now it’s being called an epidemic in Monmouth County. And it’s killing teens.
Heroin. Ten dollars a pack. Easy for your kids to get a hold of. Addicting and deadly. So…you might want to say ‘not my kid’ but you will be shocked at the information below:
In the Freehold Regional High School District alone, 721 kids have sought professional help for a heroin addiction. At Manasquan High School, 164 teens are hooked on heroin. 37 young people have died from a heroin overdose so far this year. And it’s everywhere around these beautiful Jersey Shore towns.
So how are your teens’ friends and fellow students getting hooked on heroin? 80 percent begin using with their friends, and then get hooked on it and will hide the addiction and the heroin, using alone…until they overdose.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office is starting to hit the schools to tell parents and students what is going on and spread the word. Ocean County Prosecutors are doing the same….even more young people have died there from heroin.
And to make matters even worse, the heroin in our area is stronger than around the rest of the country, making it even more deadly.
Here’s what can save your child: Communication. Keep talking about saying NO to drugs. And tell your kids how much you love them. Because of those kids in a recent study who stayed drug free, most said they did so because they did not want to disappoint their parents.
So, next time your kids say they’re ‘hanging out’……don’t assume that everything is okay. Don’t say ‘it’s not my kid.’ Keep your eyes and ears open. Get your kids talking. Love them. And please keep them safe the best way you can.
Teen prescription drug abuse programs have experienced mixed levels of effectiveness, ranging from big drops in drug abuse to no measurable effect.
