Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of American (CADCA) and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) are sponsoring a series of community meetings on the issue of teen prescription-drug misuse, CHPA announced.

Congress has designated August 2007 as the first National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month, and the meetings are intended to raise awareness of adolescent prescription-drug misuse among parents, educators, police, health professionals, and others.

Concern has been growing over misuse of over-the-counter cough medications containing dextromethorphan, sometimes known as DXM. About one in 10 adolescents say that they have used drugs containing dextromethorphan to get high, according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

CHPA president Linda A. Sudyam said that National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month "presents a timely opportunity for us to build community awareness to this problem and alert parents and teens that abusing medicine to get high is very dangerous."

The community town hall meetings, each led by panels with representatives of CADCA and CHPA, treatment and prevention experts, and policymakers, will be held:

• Aug. 7 in San Diego;
• Aug. 13 in Honolulu;
• Aug. 15 in Edison, N.J.;
• Aug. 20 in Hauppauge (Long Island), N.Y.;
• Aug. 21 in Ft. Smith, Ark.;
• Aug. 22 in Jefferson City, Mo.;
• Aug. 29 in Troy, Mich.; and
• Aug. 29 in Salt Lake City.

Attendees will receive a community toolkit,  "A Dose of Prevention: Stopping Cough Medicine Abuse Before It Starts."

For full details, see the Dose of Prevention website.