Linda Suydam, the president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, recently wrote a letter to the editor in the Washington Times in response to another great article on cough medicine abuse. Linda, who heads the association that brought the Five Moms together, mentioned a few key points:

• Teens who talk a lot to their parents about drug abuse are half as likely to abuse drugs.
• 2.4 million teens have reported abusing cough medicine to get high, sometimes taking 25 to 50 times the recommended dose. Parents need to safeguard their medicine cabinets like they do their liquor cabinets.
• We need parents, teachers, substance-abuse prevention experts, law enforcement officials, school administrators and others to learn about medicine abuse and how to prevent it.