SKITTLES / PHARM PARTIES
SKITTLES
NOT SKITTLES
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WHAT ARE " SKITTLES " or " PHARM " PARTIES?
At age 14, a young girl that we will call“ Becky”, walked into a New Year ' s Eve party at a friend ' s house, drank a couple of shots of Bacardi 151 rum, and made her way to a Ziploc bag filled with pills.
" There were Ecstasy, Xanax, Percocets, Valium and other pills in the bag that night," Becky said. " I took four Ecstasy pills and a Xanax."
Throughout her teenage years, Becky attended at least 20 parties like this, the now 23-year-old said. She would take hand- fuls of pills, wash some down with alcohol, and save the rest for later. And she ' s not alone. According to experts, such parties, known as " Skittles parties "( because of the brightly colored pills) or " pharm parties," have rapidly gained popularity among teens.
" At a lot of the parties, they just throw the pills on the table," Becky said. " It ' s like candy that you can take home with you."
Teens are taking painkillers, mainly highly addictive opioids such as OxyContin and Vicodin, from medicine cabinets in their own
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homes, said Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York in Manhattan.
" They ' re getting these prescription pills from parents or grandparents," Levounis said. " Say I go to the dentist for a tooth extraction and I get 30 painkillers and maybe take one. My granddaughter could go into my medicine cabinet without me knowing and bring the rest of the pills to a party."
A recent report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that each year, more people die from prescription painkiller overdoses than from heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.
" Addiction to prescription opioids has become the most important problem we face," Levounis said.
Pass it on: Many teens are getting dangerous highs from drugs easily found in stores or homes.
24 | Iowa- 2014 | abusemagazine. org Source: www. livescience. com / 18539-3-dangerous-drug-habits-teens. html