UPPER NYACK, N.Y., Dec. 29, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — At
New Year’s Eve parties in homes around the country, party guests
with drug dependencies will be scavenging through medicine cabinets
looking for narcotics, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and
anti-anxiety medications when they make seemingly innocent trips to
the bathroom, says Louis Tharp, executive director of the Global
Healthy Living Foundation, a patient advocacy non-profit
organization.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101229/DC22619)

According to 2008 data from the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, 35 million Americans aged 12 and
older reported nonmedical use of prescription opioids.

“When you add in mental health drugs,” Louis Tharp says, “the
number could rise to 15 percent of the population.

“The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says
prescription pain killer abuse is second only behind marijuana as
the nation’s most prevalent illegal drug problem,” he says.

Dr. Jeff Gudin, MD, a Yale-trained director of Pain Management
and Palliative Care at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in
Englewood, NJ, cautions people about leaving any prescription
medication out, “and ‘out’ means in a medicine cabinet when a
party is going on,” he says.

“Real estate agents know to empty the medicine cabinet for open
houses,” Dr. Gudin says, “but a lot of people throw a party for
guests they may not know well, and never consider prescription drug
theft.”Contact:Louis TharpExecutive DirectorGlobal Healthy Living
Foundation845-348-0400www.ghlf.org

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