While the 1980s had a crack epidemic, and the 1990s saw a surge in designer drug use, today’s epidemic is prescription drug abuse. In fact, did you know that one in five young adults has abused a prescription drug? And it’s not just prescribed medicines that people are abusing. Over-the-counter (OTC) cough medicine abuse is also abused by young people, with one in 10 youth between the ages of 12-17 having abused an OTC cough medicine to get high.
To help communities address prescription and OTC medicine abuse, CADCA created PreventRxAbuse.Org. This website is intended to house all of the resources developed by CADCA aimed at preventing medicine abuse.
Featured prominently on the site are the following resources:
• CADCA’s Rx Abuse Prevention Toolkit: From Awareness to Action – a unique toolkit that provides the facts, approaches, strategies and messages that coalitions can use to move communities beyond that first stage of awareness into action. Created through a grant from King Pharmaceuticals, the toolkit is a result of online research, focus groups and one-on-one interviews.
• The CADCA 50 Challenge – A call to action challenging community anti-drug coalitions around the country to help educate their community about prescription and over-the-counter medicine abuse.
• Various videos and other tools that coalitions can use to educate themselves and others in the community about prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse.
About CADCA
When it comes to preventing drug and alcohol abuse, there is no one-fits-all approach. It takes solutions that are based on a community’s unique problems and circumstances. That’s why, since 1992 Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) has been training local grassroots groups, known as community anti-drug coalitions, in effective community problem-solving strategies, teaching them how to assess their local substance abuse-related problems and develop a comprehensive plan to address them. Today, CADCA is the nation’s leading drug abuse prevention organization, representing the interests of more than 5,000 community anti-drug coalitions in the country.