Prescription drug use number rising at USU
Prescription drug abuse and misuse are on the rise at Utah State University, said drug and alcohol prevention specialist Ryan Barfuss of the USU Wellness Center.
“The high-risk groups on campus are your student athletes, your Greeks and incoming freshman,” Barfuss said. “People are going out and abusing (prescription drugs) to get high and sharing it and using it in non-prescribed ways.”
Barfuss is the USU representative on the Northern Utah Substance Abuse Prevention Team, which is a coalition in Cache County made up of law enforcement, the health department, PTA and concerned members of the community.
The team, which works with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), recently received a grant to research problems with prescription drug abuse. Sharing, improper disposal and medications over-prescribed by doctors were the three main issues found in surveys.
The Problem with Prescription Drugs
“Since 2000, Utah has experienced a more than four-fold increase in deaths associated with prescribed opioid pain medications,” Barfuss said.
Barfuess said according to the website, deaths due to prescribed pain medications are the fourth-highest in the state. More Utah residents die from unintentional overdoses than from motor vehicle collisions.
Barfuss said 2009 results from a survey he does every two years did not indicate a problem with prescription meds on campus, but he suspects the problem is underreported.
“On campus a lot of people don’t think it’s a problem or that because they’re prescribed it, it’s okay to have it or use it down the road,” he said. “You hear about it all the time with students using ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall for studying and staying up later.”
In 2011, he said he will narrow the scope of his survey to include questions regarding sharing and using without a prescription.
“They start diagnosing themselves and thinking it’s okay to take a friend’s prescription medication,” Barfuss said. “If a student is into hard drugs like cocaine or heroin, they generally started with prescription drugs.”
Capt. Steve Milne of the USU Police Department cited 2009 department arrest data showing 18 drug-related arrests. Drugs are the third-highest reason for arrest and are sometimes concurrent with alcohol, the highest reason for arrest.
Most drug incidents occur on Friday and Saturday nights between the hours of 8 p.m. and 2 a.m., according to the USUPD arrest data.
Sgt. John Italasano of the North Park Police Department said painkillers like oxycodone and oxycontin appeal to young people who sometimes raid their parents’ and grandparents’ medicine cabinets for a free high.
“Those types of painkillers are abused by a lot of people,” Italasano said, “so any time we can get rid of them we’re better off.”
Italasano, Milne and Barfuss recently worked together with the DEA and health department to install a prescription drug drop-off box just inside the entrance to the USU Police headquarters.
A Possible Solution
Milne said the drop-off box was made operational Jan. 19, and people were already stopping in and talking about using it to drop off medications they no longer use.
He said the DEA won’t allow them to use it for illegal narcotics like marijuana, but bags are available for disposal of all types of prescription drugs from antibiotics to Vicodin.
“We’ve actually got two drop off boxes, one is in Hyde Park and the other in North Logan,” Italasano said. “We’ve had them up for about a year. In that year that we’ve had them up we’ve destroyed over 300 pounds (of pills).”
Milne said the main purpose of this program is to get drugs off of the streets and reduce accessibility so young people are not as vulnerable to developing addictions.
The other purpose of the drop-off box program is to reduce the chance of polluting or poisoning the environment.
“We’ve also been working with Utah State University’s Water Quality Department,” Barfuss said. “Their focus was not flushing it down the toilet, not sending it down the sink to get in the sewage. Eventually it could leach out into the water system.”
Barfuss said people who are not concerned about a drug problem should be inclined to use the box because of these environmental implications. He said his hope is to appeal to as many people as he can, regardless of why they should care.
“There’s not a magic pill or magic bullet to solve any of these drug and alcohol problems,” Barfuss said. “There has to be a multi-approach to it, involving enforcement, education and treatment and counseling. One method won’t work for everybody.”
How It Works
Milne said the box will be accessible 24 hours a day since the police station is always open. The box is under constant surveillance to prevent foul play, but the process is completely anonymous.
“It’s not tracked … I don’t know if people worry about ‘Big Brother knowing what kind of drugs I’m on and what I’m turning in,'” Milne said. “I can see a lot of people being paranoid they’ll look to see what the original prescription was for and then it’s kept in my file.”
The only record that is made and turned in to the DEA is the amount of pills, in pounds, that is dropped off. He said this is to monitor the effectiveness of the program.
People who use the box are instructed to remove all identification information from the pill bottle or simply put the pills in a bag that is provided at the police department, Milne said. The pills will be periodically taken to the Veterinary Science building to be destroyed by incineration.
“When we do it, the regulations are that two of us check the box, we log it, we weigh it and we take it over and dispose of it immediately,” Milne said.
Barfuss said people who are prescribed medications regularly for things like depression or chronic pain should lock their medications in a safe or a lockable medicine cabinet.
He said people should at least hide them or secure them. If an addict is desperate and knows an individual is sick and takes medication, that person could be the victim of prowling or burglary. Using prescription drugs without a prescription is a felony.
“I almost consider prescription drugs as a gateway drug, I put them right along with tobacco, alcohol and marijuana,” Barfuss said. “Just clean out the medicine cabinet, you don’t need it. Don’t keep it around for five or six years.”
– dan.whitney.smith@aggiemail.usu.edu