A report released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, went on to say that the number of 12-to-17-year-olds who abused controlled prescription drugs rose 212 percent, while the number of adults jumped 81 percent.
"While America has been congratulating itself in recent years on curbing increases in alcohol and illicit drug abuse, and in the decline in teen smoking, the abuse of prescription drugs has been stealthily, but sharply, rising," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., CASA chairman and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, in a statement.
"Parents who do not want to become inadvertent drug pushers should consider locking their medicine cabinets."
