Oxycontin use grows among generation that 'just said no' but sees less stigma in prescription drugs

OxyContin abuse has been prevalent in rural Appalachia for many years, but now that trend is catching on elsewhere in the country, especially among youth, even after years of hearing messages to "just say no" to drugs. "Across the country, it has become a party drug favored by young, often middle-class people, and the trend is exploding in Northern California," which has many rural areas known for growing marijunaa, Cynthia Hubert of the Sacramento Bee reports.

"This is a generation of kids that said 'no' to marijuana and heroin," Jin Tanaka, a special agent in Sacramento with the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in the California Department of Justice, told Hubert. "We didn't teach them about prescription medications like OxyContin. They think it's OK because a doctor can prescribe it. Then they become addicts."

Udi Barkai, president and chief executive officer for Aegis Treatment Centers, which operates 24 clinics in California, told Hubert patients under 28 are the fastest growing population he sees related to prescription drug abuse. Just six percent of the 5,000 patients treated at Aegis clinics in 2006 were under 28, but through the first six months of 2010 the clinics have already treated 54 addicts in that age group, almost half of all patients seen. "People who used to shoot heroin 20 years ago are dying off," Barkai told Hubert, and being replaced by oxy addicts. "It has a softer look," he said. "It doesn't have the stigma because they don't have to shoot it into their veins."

Oxycontin "users can develop a physical dependence within weeks, but it often takes a year of treatment to kick the addiction," Hubert writes. "OxyContin abuse usually is treated with a daily swallow of methadone, a synthetic narcotic that helps curb cravings and withdrawal symptoms." In 2008 about half a million people used OxyContin for nonmedical purposes for the first time, Hubert writes, and as many as one in ten high school seniors have abused narcotic painkillers. "A lot of these are middle-class kids who find it at parties and clubs," Tanaka told Hubert. "They might be the nicest kids in the world, but once they get hooked, they'll do just about anything to keep getting that drug." (Read more)