GREENVILLE, S.C. (WHNS) – Some say high school students can push their limits, the question is how far will they go?
“Kids will talk about it, ‘pharming’, or they’ll talk about P-H-A-R-M parties. Parents really don’t have much of an ear for that. Or they’ll think they’re going to someone’s farm. However, they’re definitely not talking about a F-A-R-M.
Carol Reeves, founder of Greenville Family Partnership, said teens bring pharmaceutical drugs to a party, all from their household medicine cabinet,
taken together as one “party favor.”
Dr. Brancati said these ‘PHARM parties’ are silent killers. He said for many, by the time they reach the ER it’s too late.
“Over my 15 year career I can’t tell you how many times we saw problems with this,” Dr. David Brancati said. “There are so many dangers hiding in your medicine cabinet.”
He said users will typically be in an altered mental status because a lot of them are sedated, which is a common side effect of opioid pain killers.
Reeves said kids don’t see this as serious drug use, rather a safe way to get high.
“What people don’t realize, his kids have the impression that everybody pops pills,” Reeves said. “There is an instant fix. Harmless, they’re advertised everywhere.”
Brancati said the problem is that many of those kids don’t even know what they took.
According to teen drug abuse dot org, “teens are abusing prescription medications at a rate equal to or greater than their use of ecstasy, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.”
Teens normally drink during these pharm parties, and Reeves stresses starting up a conversation with your kids.
“You say something like ‘I was somewhere today and one of the ladies was talking about a PHARM party, pharming, can you tell me what that is?'”
Dr. Brancati said the key is educating parents, and keeping an eye on those medicine cabinets.
“Locking medicine cabinets with combination locks and items like that so if you’re storing it, your children don’t have readily access,” Brancati said.
