The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved OxyContin, a powerful and extremely addicting painkiller, for children as young as eleven years old. They claim the drug is safe for children as young as eleven who are suffering from chronic pain that cannot be successfully treated with other medications. The approval is a result of data that was submitted by Purdue Pharma, the drug’s manufacturer, to the FDA indicating that OxyContin is safe for children if used correctly.

The FDA claims that the approval of OxyContin for children this age is not intended to change the way it is currently used for them. The only change is that now the drug is able to be prescribed to children for its intended purposes relating to pain. In the past, doctors were able to prescribe OxyContin to children for off-label use with a parent’s consent. However, the drug was being prescribed without the proper safety and efficacy data. This was allowed due to the fact that the FDA did not regulate OxyContin.

The fact is that doctors are now able to prescribe the drug to children. This is extremely worrying given the significant rise in rates of opioid addiction, especially in young people. OxyContin is an extremely addicting narcotic that is one of the most abused drugs in the United States. It is an extended-release version of oxycodone. While it is only able to be prescribed by a doctor, people often take advantage of this and use it for non-medical purposes. There has been a significant rise in the number of people abusing prescription drugs on the last decade or so. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 16 million Americans over the age of 12 have used some form of prescription medication for a non-medical purpose at least once in the past year.

While OxyContin is most often abused by adults, OxyContin abuse has also become a major problem among young adolescents. Did you know that 2.1 percent of 8th graders, 4.6 percent of 10th graders and 5.1 percent of 12th graders abused OxyContin at least once in 2010? What is interesting is how with age, the number of children abusing the drug increases. In other words, as children age, they are more likely to abuse the drug. This means that children as young as 12 or 13 are at risk of becoming addicted to OxyContin.