Surprising Kids Killer: Methadone

(CBS)  Parents and schools frequently warn kids about the dangers of drugs.

But, as The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith reports in the first of two parts, a drug that's rarely mentioned now kills more young people than any other in several states.

Methadone, Smith explains, the same drug used to help heroin addicts kick their habit, is now being prescribed as a painkiller. That makes it easier for young people to get, and that means more kids are abusing it — and dying from overdoses of it.

Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington, among other places, have seen a rise in methadone-related deaths, Smith points out. In Maine last year, for the first time, drug-related deaths outnumbered deaths from car crashes, and the No. 1 drug in those deaths was methadone.

It typically doesn't provide a big high, Smith says, so kids think it's not working and take more of it or other substances, and the result can be fatal.

Sharon Snyder, of Palm Beach, Fla., lost her son to a methadone overdose.

On a patch of grass that used to be her lawn, Snyder has built a shrine to him.

"If tears could build a stairway," she read from a memorial in the shrine, "and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven, and bring you home again."

She tells Smith Jasa, her only child, was a good student, who never got into trouble.

"He was just a very caring person and always tried to find the best in everybody," Snyder says. "(We were) extremely close. … He was my best friend."

But one night, 19-year-old Jasa went to visit another friend, and never came home.

"I woke up at 5 in the morning and I knew he wasn't home. … It's every parent's nightmare, and I don't know if it's because we were so close but, I just knew something was wrong with him. I knew he needed my help."

Tragically, Snyder was right. Sometime that night, Jasa had taken, or been given, methadone for the first time. He passed out, and never woke up.

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