"Pharm Parties" Are a Threat to Teen Health and Safety By Jeff Mosier, published inOpposing Viewpoints in Context,2013 Prescription pills are becoming an increasingly popular drug of choice among teens, in part because of their accessibility. "Pharm" parties are an emerging trend where an assortment of pills is mixed in a bowl and taken at random by partygoers, police officials said. A Terrible Risk These pharm parties, or pharming, pill or phishing parties, as they're called, can be deadly. It happened in 2006 when a girl attended a high school party while the host's parents were out of town. To enter the party, each kid had to donate prescription pills into the bowl. Everybody was sampling various medications, and a couple of girls became unconscious. Someone panicked and called 911. One girl didn't survive. Clark County Coroner's Office investigator Felicia Borla, who handled the case, said it's more common than people think, resulting in about four deaths a year. In another case, a high school boy was having a bad reaction to some pills and went into the bathroom, vomited and passed out on the floor. His friends didn't call for help. Thinking it was funny, they recorded video of him on their cell phones. He never woke up. Recognizing the Danger Borla also is a retreat organizer for the [Las Vegas] Metropolitan Police Department's Every 15 Minutes program and has had frank discussions with high school kids about these drugs. Every 15 Minutes is a two-day program involving high school juniors and seniors that encourages them to think about personal safety when alcohol is involved, making mature decisions and recognizing that their actions affect others. "(Teenagers) state that prescription meds are the easiest things to get a hold of," Borla said. "These juniors and seniors are like pharmacists—they recognize the pills, the numbers on them, the color. They're able to list off meds that I've never heard of like it's nothing. "They don't view prescriptions really and truly as a drug," she said. "They've told me they're actually fun to mix, (and that) oxycodone and hydrocodone taste good with alcohol." The Threat of Prescription Drug Abuse Borla said prescription drug overdoses have increased across the board in recent years, and she expects that to continue. It doesn't happen just inside the home, either. Lt. Ken Young of the Clark County School District Police Department said there have been about 180 cases for possession of prescription drugs on campuses this school year [2011]. Young said the district averages about 120 cases a year since it began tracking these statistics about five years ago. Kids may trade or sell pills during school, and police usually don't find out unless a student has an adverse reaction that requires medical attention, Young said. Unless that happens, or if students or teachers tip off police, kids usually can skate through the school day high. Assessing the Problem Young said marijuana continues to be king at school, with about 400 cases each year. Henderson Police Department spokesman Keith Paul said it's difficult to track statistics for prescription drug abuse, and the number of incidents is probably not a good indication of its popularity. "That doesn't mean they're not occurring," Paul said. "It just means they've not been found out. It usually only happens when there's been an unfortunate overdose." Detective Tyson Thayer of the Metropolitan Police Department's narcotics division said it's confined mostly to high school students, but he has heard of an increasing number of cases at the middle school level, too. Thayer said students usually deal within their known associates at school as opposed to buying from outside sources, especially adults. "Some bring whole bottles and some just bring a few extra pills," he said. "It's hard to infiltrate because we're not teenagers," he said. Addressing Prescription Drug Abuse Officials agree that parents (and grandparents) can effectively stop the problem from happening if they secure any medications and dispose of unused pills. Parents are the No. 1 source for pills at school. It's easy not to notice one or two pills missing from those orange bottles that definitely aren't childproof. The Metropolitan Police Department has drop boxes for prescription pills at most of its area commands in the Las Vegas Valley. The Henderson Police Department plans to have such drop boxes available in the next few months. Anyone can drop off unused medications to be destroyed. The disposal program has been around for about four months, and the department has received about 500 pounds of medication, Thayer added. "Pharm Parties" Are a Myth By Jack Shafer, published inOpposing Viewpoints in Context,2013 Kids, here's a great idea for a back-to-school party! Run to your bathroom and empty all of your parents' prescription and nonprescription medicines into a bag. Now call all your friends, tell them to do the same, and ask them to meet you at your wackiest friend's house. Next, retrieve the biggest bowl in the house and have everybody dump their pharmacological loot into it. Stir the mass of pills with your hand, call the rest of your friends, and invite each arriving guest to scoop up a handful and swallow as they enter party paradise! On how many levels is this so stupid it can't have ever happened except as a joke? Debunking the Myth If you've read one of my seven previous columns about the "pharm party" myth in which drugs are allegedly shared and consumed in this fashion (June 15, 2006; June 19, 2006; March 25, 2008; March 26, 2008; March 23, 2009; Jan. 21, 2010; and March 17, 2010), you already know that the media keep repeating this tall tale. To reprise my earlier work, the pharm party myth goes back to the 1960s, when the events were known as "fruit salad parties." The standard pharm party article does not quote a participant, a police officer, or a parent who has actually witnessed the drug event. In most pieces, a drug counselor or a cop is the authoritative source who says the parties are rampant but then offers no proof. When you think it through, pharm parties are completely illogical. Drug users have always traded drugs. But no druggie has an incentive to randomly share his parents' OxyContin if there is a chance that all he'll get in return is his pals' over-the-counter allergy meds and Advil. Drug users are a discerning lot—they read labels and use Internet guides to identify their drugs in the field. As I've written before, they're no more likely to grab a handful of drugs out of a bowl and eat them on the blind chance that they'll get the buzz they want than an attendee at a backyard cookout will drink the first beer he touches at the bottom of the ice chest. Even heavy beer drinkers favor one brand of beer over another. The Persistent Myth And yet the myth won't die. In a Sept. 13 feature about addictive pharmaceuticals, Time magazine reports: This is leading to a rise in the incidence of what's known as skittling, a social phenomenon with deadly consequences. "Kids steal from their parents' medicine chests, go to a party and dump everything into a bowl at the door," says Juan Harris a Hanley [Center] drug counselor. "Anyone who comes in just grabs a handful." The terms skittling or skittle parties have also appeared in eight newspaper stories in the past 30 months to describe pharm parties (Grand Rapids Press, April 4, 2008; the Oklahoman, July 27, 2008; Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Dec. 10, 2008; the Bloomington, Ill., Pantagraph, May 23, 2009; the Rock Hill, S.C., Herald, July 19, 2009 ... ; the North Carolina Fort Mill Times, Dec. 11, 2009, ... ; Manchester, New Hampshire's WMUR-TV, Feb. 22, 2010; the Westchester County, N.Y., Journal News, March 11, 2010, ... ; and the Westchester County Journal News again, April 9, 2010). Meanwhile, in the past six months, the term pharm parties has appeared in the Virginian-Pilot, Feb. 7, 2010; on CNN's Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell, March 1, 2010, in which Marie Osmond talks about them in a Larry King Live tape; North Carolina's Asheville Citizen-Times, March 17, 2010; the Cincinnati Enquirer, April 12, 2010; the Albany Times Union, April 15, 2010, ... ; Tulsa World, April 16, 2010; Florida's Stuart News, April, 18, 2010; Oklahoma's Woodward News, April 30, 2010; South Dakota's Argus Leader, May 23, 2010, ... ; Harrisburg, Pa.'s WHPTV, June 18, 2010; North Carolina's Richmond County Daily Journal, June 22, 2010; Connecticut's News-Times, Aug. 16, 2010; and the Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2010. Do Pharm Parties Exist? In none of these stories or mentions—including this week's Time piece—is a specific pharm party mentioned or a police report cited. They're all generic mentions, often coming from the lips of drug counselors or cops talking about the "problem." But sometimes the police actually talk sense. When the Fort Mill Times asks the head of York County's drug enforcement unit about skittle parties and pharm parties, he says plenty of people are doing pills, but no police records exist to document the pharm parties people are talking about. "We haven't seen it ourselves," the drug cop tells the newspaper. "We hear about them when we arrest somebody." A Witness But evidence that you should never say never comes from WHSV-TV in Harrisonburg, Va. In its June 21, 2010, report, the station quotes and names a 17-year-old who says he attended a pharm party! At last, a first-person take, direct from the scene of the bacchanal! "While I was hanging out with them, they asked me if I wanted to go to a pharm party," the young man tells WHSV. "I never knew what it was, so I said sure." The young man told the station that he was shocked to see other kids taking random meds from a bowl and washing them down with alcohol. He says he did not join in. We can believe that the young man is lying about the pharm party. Or that he's exaggerating. Or that he is confusing what he saw with what he has heard talked about. Or we can believe he's telling the absolute truth and that after four decades of apocryphal drug stories masquerading as news, life is now imitating fiction, and kids are finally munching random drugs. Me? I'll believe it when I hear it from the drug-eaters themselves.
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