Use of OxyContin by adolescent students

Although increases in the nonmedical use of OxyContin (oxycodone) in the United States have been reported recently,1^,2 few data are available to assess whether such use has diffused into general populations in Canada.

In a school survey of 7726 Ontario students in grades 7 to 12,3 1.3% of the students (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.9% to 1.7%) reported lifetime use of OxyContin, and 1.0% (95% CI 0.7% to 1.5%) reported use in the past year. Similar to the situation for other illegal drugs,3 the majority (69%) of past-year users had used the drug only once or twice. Reported use did not vary significantly by sex or grade but did vary by region, with the highest past-year use occurring among students in Northern Ontario (3.3%; 95% CI 1.8% to 6.1%).

To assess whether OxyContin users differ from the users of other illicit drugs, we compared the drug-use profiles of 105 lifetime OxyContin users and 909 users of illicit drugs other than cannabis and OxyContin. The results suggested that OxyContin is merely an addition to the repertoire of drugs used by adolescents. Among 13 illicit drugs examined (e.g., cannabis, heroin, methamphetamine, barbiturates, stimulants, tranquilizers, LSD, phencyclidine [PCP], hallucinogens, cocaine, crack, ecstasy and methylphenidate). OxyContin users were significantly more likely than nonusers to use only 4 of these drugs (heroin, barbiturates, tranquilizers and methylphenidate). This finding raises the spectre of potential polydrug reactions.

Of course, such data are not without limitations. For example, as for other illicit drugs, we would expect some degree of underreporting of OxyContin use. Also, our question was restricted to OxyContin use and thus did not yield information about the use of oxycodone in general and other opioids.

Still, these data, which constitute one of the first reports of OxyContin use within a general Canadian population, allow 2 important observations. First, at this point, there is no evidence of the diffusion of OxyContin into mainstream adolescent populations. Second, our Ontario estimates are lower than the most comparable ones available from the United States. According to US data for 2005,2 1.8% of 8th-graders, 3.2% of 10th-graders and 5.5% of 12th-graders reported past-year use of OxyContin; the corresponding data for Ontario students were 0.7% (95% CI 0.3% to 1.6%), 0.7% (95% CI 0.3% to 1.5%) and 1.4% (95% CI 0.7% to 2.7%).