Posted at: 03/09/2010 6:53 PM
By: Dan Conradt

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Pharm Party Awareness

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- When you think about drug abuse, you probably think of things like marijuana, cocaine, and meth. But the drugs being abused most often these days are far more accessible, and Minnesota cities and counties are fighting back.

You probably have some in your medicine cabinet at home, or maybe in the bottom of your purse, or your desk drawer at work. But today, that forgotten bottle of pills is in high demand.

"In our youth right now, this is the drug of choice," says Sgt. Karl Schreck of the Chisago County Sheriff’s Office.

Steve King of Mower County Correctional Services says, "Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and all those drugs combined, prescription drug abuse is at the top of the heap."

"It’s really become a problem with our kids in the school system, taking each other's drugs, taking their prescription drugs out of medicine cabinets or their grandparents medicine cabinets and selling them or trading them," says Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi.

Sgt. Schreck says, "It's a mentality thing. Youth right now are thinking it's safe because it's a prescription."

But legal doesn't necessarily mean safe.

"Oxycontin is a lot like heroin. That's going to catch somebody's attention, so that's what we're dealing with when we talk about the potency of these drugs," says Thor Bergland, a chemical dependency counselor.

Across the country, more and more high school and college-aged kids are attending pharm parties. That's pharm spelled p-h-a-r-m.

"Everybody brings some medication, they dump it in a bowl and throughout the party people just reach in and grab stuff," says Sgt. Schreck.

So Chisago County implemented a groundbreaking program to rid the county's medicine cabinets, purses, and desk drawers of unwanted prescription drugs.

Sgt. Schreck says, "it's kind of like a secure mail box in an interior wall. People are anonymous, and can drop off unused medications. Right now in Chisago County we're taking in about five pounds of drugs a day."

And that means a ton of pills every year that won't end up in the wrong hands.

Members of the Austin Area Drug Task Force heard presentations Tuesday about the Chisago County Prescription Drug Collection Program, with an eye toward possibly starting a similar program here.