Ontario secondary school students are looking more and more to prescription drugs to get high, according to a new survey.
The Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey shows that slightly more than one in five students say they've used other people's painkillers. More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they got the drugs from their homes.
Twenty-one per cent of students said they used Tylenol 3, Percocet, and OxyContin without prescription.
"The drugs that they asked about such as painkillers contain opiates that provide an initial high and that could be one of the reasons (for abuse)," Matthew Graham, a drug policy advisor, told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday.
Graham, who works for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, said parents need to talk to their kids about medication abuse because the numbers show there is a cause for concern.
The survey -- which was completed by 6,323 students in grades 7 through 12 -- found that use of hard drugs such as crack, methamphetamines, and crystal meth has dropped.
But marijuana use, however, didn't decline. Twenty-six per cent of students said they've smoked pot at least once in the past year.
The survey also revealed that 61 per cent of students said they drink.
Graham said people who work with teens in health and addiction services need to come up with a message for teens to curtail alcohol abuse, which he said was the drug of choice for many students.
People should understand that "alcohol is a legal substance that can be used moderately but it has a lot of risky harms," said Graham.
Graham said that society has been successful in combating teen smoking and drinking and driving.
"We need to take those lessons and apply them to illicit drug use and to risky forms of use of alcohol," he said.
The survey is conducted for the University of Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
