How can schools and parents work together to combat prescription medication abuse in today’s teens?
But again, I think that such efforts are amiss because no one anticipated this kind of behavior in such broad prevalence. Maybe we should have seen it coming, but no one did and it has come on so quickly and in such volume. It is now so normalized. That’s another part of the problem that we face. Consider these statistics: one in four kids say that they have a friend who intentionally abuses medicine to get high and another one out of three or one out of four (depending exactly which medicine you’re talking about) says that they have been offered a medicine to get high in the last year. Such statistics reflects a teen culture wherein such behavior seems to be no big deal. When that behavior defines the peer norm, it makes it harder for kids to make a decision not to use because that’s the definition of peer pressure. If, in the absence of an understanding of how dangerous it is, you also believe it seems safer, it becomes an even bigger challenge for parents, teacher, and those of us i
