Rx for injury: adolescent prescription drug misuse.

I n the past 2 decades, preventable injuries in children and adolescents have been on the decline. This decrease in injuries is a positive outcome of many years of injury prevention activities; however, one area in which injury rates are on the rise is drug poisoning. In fact, the number of poisoning incidences in youth aged 15 to 19 years doubled between 2000 and 2009. This sharp increase in poisoning events has been attributed to a dramatic increase in the number of medications being prescribed and the misuse of those medications. Poisoning is now the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States, and drugs—most of which are prescription drugs—cause 90% of poisoning deaths.