Adolescents’ awareness about prescription opioid misuse and preferences for educational interventions

Objectives: This study explored adolescents’ awareness about prescription opioid misuse, sources of medication information, and educational preferences. Design: An online survey explored adolescents’ understanding and perceptions of prescription opioids and opioid misuse and safety, medication information sources, and educational preferences. Setting and Participants: Eligible participants included students from 3 Wisconsin high schools who could speak and understand English. Participants were recruited through “backpack mail” and completed surveys online at school. Outcome Measurs: Survey responses were compared across demographic information of the study participants. Binary response items were compared across demographic strata by Fisher exact tests, and Likert responses were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: A total of 190 students (53% female, 53% white, 32% Hispanic) were surveyed. Most (83.5%) considered using someone else's opioid medication to be misuse, 85.2% identified using opioids at a higher dose or frequency than prescribed as misuse, and 67.6% considered using an opioid prescription after its expiration date to be misuse. Approximately 90% of students perceived that opioid misuse causes some, quite a bit, or a great deal of harm to a person's physical and mental health and school ability. Many students were able to correctly identify examples and consequences of misuse, however 24.7% believed that flushing opioids down the drain was dangerous. The most common source for finding information about opioids was Google or other search engines (67.6%), followed by talking with parents (56.7%), talking with a doctor or nurse (54.9%), and online videos (42.3%). Conclusion: Adolescents have some opioid safety knowledge, but there is a clear opportunity to increase knowledge and understanding of risks. Adolescents could benefit from opioid safety education, particularly on safe storage and disposal, harms of misuse, and strategies for discouraging peer opioid misuse.