“Prescription medications are harder to detect if there’s no smell or stumbling,” he said. “But that person may be as high as the day is long.”

For those who have reached a point where they have to face the truth about their prescription drug abuse, Luckey said there are multiple sources for treatment. Green Country Behavioral Health Services has two crisis units that can help patients get stabilized — one for adults and one for juveniles.

Prescription drugs are not acquired on the street in the same way as illegal drugs, Luckey said. Instead, they are often found in the home. But more security isn’t necessarily the solution.

“If you lock something up, somebody is going to unlock it,” he said. “If you have a drug and have no need of it, dispose of it.”

Luckey said most juveniles he has talked to who are incarcerated say they wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if they had grown up with more boundaries.

“Give the kids boundaries, but you still need to spend that quality time with them,” he said. “Know your children. And, being in church plays a big part.”

According to a media release by Narconon Arrowhead, a non-traditional drug rehabilitation and education facility in Canadian, an estimated 48 million people ages 12 and older have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons in their lifetimes. That’s approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population.

Equally alarming was the 2004 National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA’s) “Monitoring the Future” survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders, which found that 9.3 percent of 12th-graders reported using Vicodin without a prescription in the past year, and 5 percent reported using Oxycontin.

Narconon attributes much of the cause for this problem to availability, and criticizes pharmaceutical companies for putting profit ahead of public health.

“Everything from arthritis pain, to indigestion, to erectile dysfunction, to anxiety and depression ‘disorders’ has many pharmaceutical companies looking to sell you one of their latest prescription drugs,” the release states. “As a result, many doctors today are flooded with patients that are convinced they need a prescription drug for something and won’t be happy until they leave with a prescription.”

Find help

• Area Prevention Resource Center — 682-8407.

• MONARCH — 683-0124.