Students hospitalized after taking pills at school

OLIN, N.C. -- Parents should lock their medicine cabinets like they lock gun safes.

That's how bad police say the prescription drug abuse problem is among teens.

And the evidence: police say 13 kids popping pills at one Charlotte area middle school.

We talked with one of CMPD’s nationally recognized drug investigators who said, “Apparently it’s very easy.”

Too easy, detective Ernie Kirchen says, for kids to get and abuse prescription drugs.

“They may share the medicine they may sell it. They may come right out of the parents medicine cabinets.”

Police say 13 kids at North Iredell Middle were popping pills. Two got so sick they had to go to the hospital.

Kirchen said, “You have teenagers who think because it’s in a pure form and because it’s very easily accessible that there nothing wrong with it or less dangerous.”

In fact he says the wrong pills in the wrong hands can be very dangerous, even deadly.

Police say the kids at North Iredell were told they were taking Oxycontin and Hydrocodone, when in fact it was Excedrin and some antibiotics.

Kirchen says for teens, prescription drugs seem like an Ok thing to get into. “We see kids that would never think about taking a street drug at all can easily be talked into taking a pill of some sort.”

Three of those North Iredell Middle School students could face criminal charges for distributing those pills.

The two students taken to the hospital after taking the pills were not seriously hurt.