Recently, the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has conducted a unique survey to find out how many teenagers in the province of Ontario use prescription painkillers, also known as opioids or opiates, for non-medical purposes, or, in other words, to get a drug-related “high“. The results of the survey show that, in addition to alcohol, more and more kids of a high-school age in the province of Ontario, in general, and in Toronto, in particular, choose opioids as their drugs of choice. Furthermore, similar situation with teenage substance abuse is typical for entire Canada.

Frequently misused types of prescription pain medications are pharmaceutical drugs containing morphine, codeine, or oxycodone. They are widely applied in medicine to cure headaches, migraines, arthritis pain, and other medical conditions involving pains and aches. In addition to opiates, Canadian teens also tend to misuse other types of prescription drugs, such as tranquilizers, sedatives, barbiturates, amphetamines, and stimulants. The most popular tranquilizers, usually prescribed to cure panic attacks and reduce stress, include benzodiazepines, such as Valium, and alprazolams, such as Xanax. Prescription stimulants, such as Adderall or Ritalin, and barbiturates, such as Nembutal and Mebaral, are other drugs often taken by high-school students with non-medical purposes.

The Toronto survey is the first of this sort ever conducted in the country. In the past, smaller drug surveys were devoted to the usage of OxyContin, an opioid pain medication, among high-school and college students. Those studies found that only about one percent of students had ever tried the drug. Similar survey conducted in 2005 in the U.S. showed only a slight increase in the non-medical use of prescription drugs among youth: from 4 percent in 2002 to 5.5 percent in 2005 among Grad 12 students.

Unfortunately, the new Toronto survey now reveals that the rate of young people who have used opiate medications to “get stoned” at least once in the past year, is as high as an alarming 21 percent! These troubling results should be a cause for public concern and a wake-up call for governmental and medical officials throughout entire Canada, says manager of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, Doug Beirness. 

Other studies in the U.S. and Canada looking at the correlates of opioid misuse among teenagers found that 12 to 17 year-olds were more likely to abuse opioids if their families had a lower social and financial status, or if they had already tried illicit drugs. Other "risk factors" included being a female and having "detached" parents.

The new survey also shows that over 75 percent of teenagers get the drugs from their parents or otherwise have an access to the pills at home. These new data should warn Canadian parents to become more attentive to what medications their children may use. As this information has not been on their radar until now, prescription drugs have often been left in places easily accessible for the teens. Armed with the new knowledge, parents should take measures to safeguard home-stored opiate medications so that their children cannot get hold of them.

Additional explanation for such a high percentage of opiates’ misuse among teenagers is that, over the past decade, the non-medical use of prescription pain medication and other addictive pharmaceutical drugs has undergone a dramatic increase among the general population of the country, as well. This connection was confirmed by the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, which was also conducted in Toronto.

Director at the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia says that the recent Toronto survey, most probably, reflects the situation with teenage opiate abuse not only in Ontario, but also in all other provinces of Canada, due to the same degree of drugs availability and similar environmental factors prevailing everywhere in the country.

Information revealed by the survey also shows that a street drug, synthetic stimulant crystal methamphetamine, is also becoming an increasing problem among students in Canada. "Crystal meth" can be produced at home by mixing over-the-counter medications containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine with other ingredients.

Another negative tendency, although not reflected in large-scale national surveys on drug abuse, is a high percentage of non-medical usage of prescription asthma inhalers among high-school youth. More than nine percent of North American teenagers are estimated to use them on a regular basis to get a narcotic "high". In the U.S., one in every five boys who suffer from asthma and carry prescription inhalers has been approached at least once to trade or sell them.

One more alarming fact is that more and more young people in both Canada and the U.S.  tend to drive when they are high on drugs or have consumed alcohol.

Interestingly enough, while the use of alcohol and drugs get progressively higher among Canadian teenagers, their smoking rates show a tendency to decrease. According to a recently released Nova Scotia student drug survey, smoking among high-school students of the province has dropped eight percent since 2002. Comparatively, in Ontario, the rate of smoking among teenagers has dropped three percent since 2005. According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, overall average smoking rates among teens in Canada continue falling, yet still constitute about 20 percent.

The new Ontario survey will add to all-Canadian statistics on teen drug abuse and will help to shape a youth anti-drug strategy that was announced in the country in October 2007. This $10-million strategy is planned to be implemented within a five-year period and will include an aggressive campaign in mass media and the development of the first national standards for prevention programs - both with the purpose to discourage the use of drugs among Canadian teenagers.