Study: Teen abuse of painkillers a persistent ill

0 Comments | USA TODAY, December, 2007 | by Donna Leinwand

Teen drug use continues its overall decline, but that progress does not extend to powerful prescription painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, a new national study shows.

The report, which President Bush will make public today, found the highly addictive narcotic painkillers that imitate morphine remain as popular as ever among the nearly 50,000 teens surveyed. Painkiller abuse is second only to marijuana use, according to the survey by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Drugs with some of the steepest declines in use over the past five years are marijuana, Ritalin and methamphetamine. For example, in 1999, the year the survey began tracking methamphetamine use, 4.7% of high school...