What's the most dangerous drug that teens use?
Well, the biggest problem we're having in teens right now is the pharmaceutical medications - oral opiates and benzodiazepine medications. Teens generally have a trend whereby there is an inverse relationship between perceived harm and probability of use. Teens are not dumb. If they think something's going to hurt them, if they believe that - again, they have to get the information from a source that they trust - if they believe something's going to hurt them, they're less likely to do it. So generally, we're making inroads in the areas of hallucinogenics and other illicit drugs like cocaine and speed, but pharmaceuticals are still growing massively. And naturally so, right? We are a pill society. Open your medicine cabinet. I challenge anybody listening, go open it and see if you don't find an opiate pain medication, a sleeping pill or a benzodiazepine. And on top of that, psychostimulants like Adderoll or Ritalin. Kids look at that first and go, "Well, the stimulants, Judy's been on that since she was 12 years old and she's fine, how dangerous could that be?" Or "Vicodin, what's the big deal? Mom had that in her closet after dental work, there's 40 pills sitting there, they've been there for three months, it's no big deal." That's kind of how they think about it. But in reality the benzodiazepines, the Valium class medications - Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Librium, whatever. Those and opiates - Oxycontin, Vicodin, Norco, Hydrocodone - and the psychostimulants like Adderoll and Ritalin are amongst the most addictive. Particularly the benzos and the opiates are the most addictive compounds they could be exposed to. So they're very powerful drugs with a high potential of all sorts of consequences as a result of their use: unwanted sexual contact, car accidents, generalized accidents, not breathing, aspiration. These all happen with these drugs. And triggering addiction, there's a very high probability.
