Hi Knox Trail Families,
It’s recently come to my attention that some of our students may be consuming a very dangerous drink called Lean.
The following information is from the American Addiction Centers website. Lean, also known as purple drank, purple lean, sizzurp, dirty sprite, and lean drink—is a made of combination of prescription-strength cough medicine, soft drinks, and hard, fruit-flavored candy. The prescription cough syrups used to make lean drink present the most danger because they often contain codeine, an opioid drug. Another active ingredient in some prescription cough syrups is promethazine, an antihistamine with potentially sedating effects that, in combination with opioids, could markedly impair motor functioning.
Adolescents often get together with friends to make lean. Lean is concocted from a narcotic drug and its excessive consumption can have dangerous consequences.
Codeine is an opiate or opioid drug and is frequently used as a cough suppressant or mild analgesic. When codeine is consumed in large doses or for non-prescription purposes, however, it can have extremely harmful effects. People may easily lose track of how much of the drug they have consumed because lean is in drink form and because the cough syrup in it may be masked by pleasant or familiar flavors from soda and candy.
Conclusive usage statistics are difficult to come by in part because the whole lean phenomenon is a relatively recent one. Also, as the primary ingredient may be obtained legally with a prescription, it becomes difficult to track its misuse as a component of lean. Making the trend of using lean even more complicated are the many celebrities and professional athletes who have been at the center of news stories about the drug. Their media coverage and tacit endorsement of lean use has made sizzurp a hot topic with the tweens and teens who look up to them and now think that it is safe or cool to use.
For more information on Lean please visit this website:
https://drugabuse.com/opioids/dextromethorphan/lean-purple-drank/
Best regards,
Ralph