DEA urge parents to discard old medication to prevent substance abuse among teens

Many experts believe that keeping powerful prescription drugs in the home medicine cabinets may be lethal to teens. Adults who keep old medicine without discarding them may put their children at risk of substance abuse because of their ease of access.

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials recently announced that keeping a medicine cabinet full of old prescription pills may put family members in danger, Cumberland Times-News reports.

Officials told the news source that old prescription drugs may be dangerous and could contribute to a number of problems such as opiate addiction or substance abuse. They added that many troubled teens may get their introduction to drug abuse from drugs located in their own medicine cabinets.

“Prescription drug abuse is epidemic in our country,” Barbara Carreno, a spokeswoman for the DEA, told the media outlet. “Increasingly, prescription drugs are the gateway drugs for young people. The majority of young people tell surveyors that they get the drugs from friends and family,”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, nearly 5 percent of high school seniors reportedly abuse the prescription painkiller OxyContin in 2008.