Easy for the drug dealers to sneak into your living room: Online drug sales

"The Internet made it easy for the drug dealers to sneak into your living room," said Francine Haight of La Mesa, California, whose son Ryan died in 2001 at 18 from an overdose of hydrocodone, generic Vicodin, which he had secretly ordered online with a debit card. An A-student and varsity tennis player, he had claimed in an online questionnaire to be a 25-year-old with back pain. He got his prescription and received the drug in the mail. His mother, a registered nurse, has fought against online sales since then.

In April, the U.S. Senate passed the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, which would require certification of online pharmacies. It would also require doctors see patients before prescribing controlled substances. The bill is now in committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. At least eight states have passed laws barring electronic prescribing or sales without a legitimate prescription.

"Abuse of prescription drugs has exploded among college students, and…one way they get these drugs is over the Internet," said Joseph Califano, the director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The use of prescription opioids and anxiety drugs, especially in combination, accounts for a growing share of deadly overdoses nationwide.

Advice to parents of college students: Read their monthly credit card statements.

Read another prescription drug overdose story affecting a well-known actor.

Thanks to Erik Eckholm for the source article in the July 9 issue of the New York Times.

Overdoses – the Numbers

Unintentional fatal drug overdoses in the United States nearly doubled from 1999 to 2004, and are now the nation's second-leading cause of accidental death, behind automobile crashes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported recently.
Nearly 20,000 people died from accidental drug overdoses in 2004, according to death certificates. CDC researchers believe sedatives and prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin were the chief cause of the increase.

"There is a misperception that because a drug is a prescription medicine, it's safe to use for non-medical reasons. Clearly that is not true," said Dr. Anne Marie McKenzie-Brown, a pain medicine expert at Atlanta's Emory Crawford Long Hospital.

Advice: When you’re done with your Vicodin or OxyContin prescription, toss them down the garbage disposal; you can get another prescription if and when you need it.

Read Mike Stobbe’s full newspaper article.

Teens Raiding Medicine Cabinet: The wrong drugs

Many teenagers are abusing prescription drugs like Vicodin, oxycontin, and others, according to the recent annual "Monitoring the Future" survey.

Advice to parents of teens: Go to your medicine cabinet, and discard the prescription meds that you're no longer using, down the garbage disposal. This might even save the life of a younger child like Saleem.

Thanks to John Walters of the Office of National Drug Control Policy for this tip. For more, see Christopher Lee's story reprinted in the Boston Globe on Dec. 22.