WESTFIELD – Although the incidence of youthful abuse of over-the-counter medications does not appear to be rampant in the city, a recent incident at Westfield Vocational-Technical High School suggests that parents and educations still need to be concerned.
School resource officer Tracy Ploof reported last month that he learned of three girls who had been treated by the school nurse after staff observed that they were acting unusually and believed to be under the influence of a foreign substance.
Ploof reports that his investigation found that an 18-year-old senior class member was in possession of a 22 doses of an over-the-counter expectorant that contains dextromethorphan, as well as empty packaging for more than 60 additional doses, and appears to have provided the medication to two freshmen girls.
The parents of the three girls were notified and the school nurse recommended that the girls be evaluated at the Noble Hospital emergency department.
Ploof reports that a criminal complaint was lodged against the senior girl for reckless endangerment of a child and she was also cited for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana when she was found to be in possession of smoking devices containing marijuana residue.
Dr. Stanley Strzempko, the Noble Hospital vice president for medical affairs, said in a telephone interview that abuse of dextromethorphan by young people has been an issue, in his experience, since he was a medical resident.
He said that he saw the problem with dextromethorphan in the late ’70s and the ’80s but said after that “it kind of went away.”
He went on to say “It just came back on my radar this fall” after discussions with the school nurse at the vocational school.
Strzempko said that the drug is found in many cold preparations and is not a problem, if taken in the recommended dosage.
Massive overdoes of a cold preparation containing the drug can produce “euphoria and a dissociative state” sought by users but those large doses can also result in symptoms ranging from agitation and a racing heart “all the way to hyperthermia and coma,” said Strzempko.
Another problem with using huge does of an over-the-counter preparation is that, in order to get the “high” sought, a user will also get massive doses of the other ingredients which have their own hazards.
He said that cold preparations may include acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and other aspirin substitutes, which can be damaging to the liver in high doses, or other compounds which may act as depressants in high doses.
However, he said that the problem seems to be cyclical and changing.
“Every year there’s something new” he said, that “isn’t necessarily wise” and may be “potentially harmful.”
He said that in recent years he has seen problems for young people with synthetic marijuana, inhaled cinnamon and “fire and ice”, a technique of inducing a small area of frostbite by use of common salt and ice.
He said that those fads seem to have run their courses and said “I’m hopeful this will follow the pattern.”
Strzempko said that the problem of dextromethorphan abuse in the city appears to be limited as, this academic year, the hospital has treated only three patients for it, all of whom have been vocational school students.
Officer James Summers, the school resource officer at Westfield High School, said that he has not seen any cases of dextromethorphan abuse at his school but agrees that the problem of abuse of legal products is cyclical at high schools where the population changes every year and each new group of children believes they have discovered something new.
He said that youths can easily find information about ways to abuse legal products on Internet sites and some of them follow directions they find in order to get “high”.
However, he said, before long the youths find out that, although a product may be legal, “it’s not cheap.”
And, he said, they learn “you can really get messed up on it” so, after a time, “it goes away because people figure out that it’s a really stupid thing to do.”
However, he said, in a few years when the school population changes “it comes back when somebody (new) hears about it.”
