.gif) Education
Schoolkids abuse prescription drugs
Students can get others' prescriptionsBy COLLEEN
KRANTZ
Register Staff Writer
02/14/2001
So many Iowa schoolchildren take prescription drugs for behavioral
or emotional problems that it would have been easy for a Cedar
Rapids girl to get pills for herself and two friends, officials said
Tuesday.
Three Prairie High School students overdosed on a combination of
drugs including Ritalin, a cerebral stimulant, and Prozac, an
antidepressant, while at school Monday, authorities said.
All had been treated in intensive care units at area hospitals by
Tuesday morning.
The investigation continued into whether the 15-year-old girl who
allegedly provided the drugs sneaked them out of a residential
treatment center where she was staying.
"Right now, we are leaning toward the possibility that she got
them" at the Four Oaks facility in Cedar Rapids, said Mick
Starcevich, superintendent of the College Community school district
in south Cedar Rapids.
A spokeswoman at Four Oaks, which treats children with emotional
and behavioral problems, said she doesn't know how the girl could
have smuggled the medication out of the facility.
"We have a very strict procedure when it involves the
disbursement of prescription drugs," said Lisa McKirgan, Four Oaks
communications director.
A state-licensed employee distributes pills to one child at a
time, McKirgan said. Residents must show that their mouths and the
cup that contains the pills are empty.
The medications are locked away, because it is common for some of
the youths to have drug-abuse problems, she said.
The number of children visiting pediatricians' offices for
psycho-social problems more than doubled between 1979 and 1996, a
national study shows. Access to prescription drugs is easy for a
determined youngster, officials said.
Like many others in the state, each school in the College
Community district has dozens of students taking prescription drugs
for behavioral or emotional problems, Starcevich said. Some students
take prescription drugs under the supervision of school nurses, and
others take them before or after school, he said.
Sam Kuperman, director of child psychiatry at the University of
Iowa, said although the drugs are much more widely used than they
once were, abuse isn't necessarily widespread. "Ninety-nine percent
of the time they are very benign," Kuperman said.
He said the antidepressant Prozac really has no street value, but
Ritalin, often prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder in children, can be abused.
Problems arise when a child who doesn't want to take a prescribed
drug "might cheek it and spit it out or hide it somehow," he
said.
Family members often keep prescription drugs where children can
get them, said Karen Loihl, executive director of the Iowa
Psychiatric Society.
"It doesn't have to be the kids that have the drugs. If their
parents are on Prozac, they could get it there," Loihl said.
"Parents don't always tend to protect those well."
Starcevich believes the two girls and the boy, all 15-year-old
sophomores, took one or more of four kinds of prescription drugs in
a restroom during lunch break Monday. A teacher got help when the
students began acting strangely soon afterward in class, he
said.
School officials did not disclose the students' names.
After the students are released from the hospitals, they will
face disciplinary action, Prairie Principal Ken Steine said. School
policy dictates that they receive at least a five-day suspension and
possible expulsion, Steine said. |
Home : News
Agriculture
