Wednesday, October 30, 2002

I am writing to all parents of teenagers and pharmacists in our local grocery and drug stores. The over-the-counter medication Coricidin HBP is being abused by many of the teenagers in our community.

Grocers and pharmacists may be noticing large numbers of these pills disappearing from their shelves. This is not due to a particularly large number of persons having cold symptoms.

Parents, please take note if you see your child with these small red pills and question their use. When taken in high doses, the abuser is impaired by hallucinations and, if driving, would be a danger to themselves and others.

As with many drugs that are abused, some of the signs you will see in your child after taking these include feeling very tired, sleeping excessively, acting irritable, a change in attitude, enlarged pupils, and complaints of feeling very hot with observed sweating while indoors.

Our city needs to come together to stop the abuse of Coricidin before it destroys a life.

Christina Quinn, R.N., D.N.S.

Peachtree City

[Editor's note: A web site devoted to the dangers of abuse of this drug says that several other over-the-counter drugs also contain the desired ingredient dextromethorphan. The web address for this anecdotal and officially unverified information is http://www.coricidin.org.]