A Witch's Brew Of Deadly Drugs

When drug counselor Mike Salazar talks to Phoenix-area students he hears more and more about the prescription muscle-relaxant Soma.

In fact, alarm bells blared when a 16-year-old girl was arrested for smuggling almost 3,000 Soma pills across the border from Mexico and distributing them through a five-school drug ring. Twenty-nine students were suspended, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

"Some (students) are crushing it up and snorting it," said Mesa police Sgt. Sean Kelly. "They're also mixing it with alcohol. "

Parents, packing a drug forum, said they didn't know, while some students say it's no big deal, and no big secret.

"They're really cheap, especially down in Mexico and everybody's got them," said one student.

Most of the Soma is coming from Mexican border towns like Nogales. Pharmacists say that since the Arizona crisis, the drug now is a controlled substance, like narcotics.

But they also say that American kids with money can always find someone willing to sell it to them.

Or any prescription drug, for that matter.

Seizures of prescription medications at the Nogales crossing are up 25 percent this year.

"We have Soma. We have ecstasy. We have ephedrine. We have steroids," said Chief Inspection Officer Joe Agosttini. "There's thousands of them."

And Mike Salazar, who has seen it all and done it all, says it is fueling the hottest national trend - mixing a witch's brew of prescription, even over-the-counter drugs.

"If they have access to the medicine cabinet, that's what they're going to mix together," Salazar said.

Twenty 6th graders outside Dallas got sick taking the prescription drug Tylenol with codeine. A Los Angeles woman said her daughter started with prescription drugs and ended up in treatment.

It's an addiction that knows no geographic or economic boundaries.

"This is the kind of place people move to to get away from such problems," Salazar said. "It doesn't matter if there's money or not, you know, nice, ugly, rich, poor. It's just as prevalent anywhere and everywhere."

A lesson schools in suburban Phoenix are learning the hard way.