Aside from the alarming rise in number of young Canadians taking common medicine such as painkillers, equally dangerous is the lack of awareness of the parents that some pills and tablets are already missing and that their children are frequent attendees to weekend parties where deadly combinations of prescription drugs and alcohol go together.
Dr. David Salisbury, chief medical officer of Ottawa Public Health, told the Ottawa Sun, "It's really quite scary behavior. There is a reason why prescription drugs are prescription drugs. They are designed to be given to a person who has a problem."
Salisbury said the common party poppers include Tylenol 3s, percocets and oxycontin. The last two are pain relievers with known side effects of bringing its taker into a euphoric state or the opposite mood, including depression, anxiety, irritability and restlessness.
He added, "The mixing of alcohol enhances the effect of a lot of drugs. If you are mixing those two things together, you can't predict what is going to happen."
A study released on November 2007 by Canada's Center for Addiction and Mental Health among Ontario teenagers disclosed that 21 percent of Canada's 1 million Grade 7 to 12 pupils ingest pain relievers other than for medical use. Seventy-two percent of them admitted they sourced the prescription drug from their family medicine cabinet.
