Eight OKC students sent to hospital for possible prescription drug use

BY MEGAN ROLLAND mrolland@opubco.com

Published: December 11, 2010

Eight female students at John Marshall Mid-High School went to the hospital Friday morning after complaining of grogginess and slurred speech that made the school nurse suspect prescription drug use.

The incident comes two months after four students at Putnam City North High School were sent to the hospital for prescription drug abuse.

Both are indicators of what the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control say is an epidemic of prescription drug abuse.

“About 8 of the 10 calls that I get from Oklahoma high schools about drugs that they confiscate are prescription drugs, and it's often medicine they have taken out of their own homes,” said Mark Woodward, bureau spokesman.

It is unclear what drugs the middle school students at John Marshall took, but at 9 a.m., two students went to the school nurse obviously impaired, Oklahoma City Public Schools spokeswoman Tierney Tinnin said.

The nurse sent an alert to teachers, who later identified six other students with similar symptoms, Tinnin said.

Two went to the hospital with their parents, and six other students, ages 12 to 15, went to area hospitals in ambulances, said Lara O'Leary, EMSA spokeswoman. The students were taken in good condition.

Woodward said that because prescription drugs come from doctors and adults take them frequently, students get lured into a false sense of safety.

“They are as dangerous and deadly as anything you will find on the street,” Woodward said.

Of 643 drug-related deaths in 2009 that were autopsied, 87 percent involved prescription drugs, Woodward said.

At Putnam City North, a student was arrested in the days that students were ill from prescription drugs in possession of 16 pills.

Woodward said that when something like this happens, the agency in charge always tries to discover the source of the controlled substances, and charges are filed.

In the worst-case scenario, Woodward said, if a student dies or is seriously injured from the drugs, the person who is the source of the pills can face manslaughter or murder charges.