GLASGOW, Ky. — A 12-year-old boy gets off the school bus and walks into an empty home. With his parents still at work, he quickly enters their bedroom. Then the master bathroom.

He opens their medicine cabinet, which was not locked. He reaches in and grabs a pill bottle. He unscrews the lid and tilts the bottle until one pill falls into his hand.

He tosses the pill into his mouth and closes his eyes.

This hypothetical situation might not be too far-fetched, and it might happen closer to home than some may want to believe.

But it happens.

According to the National Institutes on Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse, young adults (age 18 to 25) are the biggest abusers of prescription opioid pain relievers, ADHD stimulants and anti-anxiety drugs.

“There has been an occasion, a time or two, where a student will be caught with pills,” said Rita Powell, health care coordinator for Barren County (Kentucky) Schools (BCS). “And they would be in the parent’s prescription bottle or grandparent’s prescription bottle.”

Powell emphasized to the Glasgow, Kentucky Daily Times that this is an issue with “a very small percentage of our students,” but numbers state and nationwide spark more widespread concern.

In the state of Kentucky, minors ages 17 and under combined for 1,383 drug arrests in 2014, according to Kentucky State Police statistics. The 18-to-20 age group combined for 5,877 drug arrests.

Kids who start out on pills may use for a few years before their addiction sinks in, said Ron Lafferty, director of the Barren River Drug Task Force.

“They may play with it for a while, and then they’ll get to where they’re doing more and more and the addiction phase hits,” he said.

Lafferty said the youngest person task force staff has arrested for drugs was 12.

“I’m sure school resource officers have probably got someone younger than that,” he said.

Lafferty said kids “absolutely” have access to pills.

“If people will just take a few minutes and go through their medicine cabinet, get stuff they’re no longer using and get rid of them.”

He said they have drop-off containers for unused medication at the sheriff’s department and at most other law enforcement agencies in the area.

“Come and drop them off and you don’t have to worry about them.”

Powell said sometimes kids do not even know what they have in the bottle, and that it is not always pain-killers.

Lafferty said kids are not the only ones getting into medicine cabinets.

“You’ve got friends that you probably wouldn’t suspect they’ve got a drug problem, a pill problem,” he said. “They come over to visit. The first thing they’re gonna’ do is go to your medicine cabinet.

“They’re gonna’ go to the bathroom, open your medicine cabinet and see what you have. They may not take all of ‘em. They might. Or they may just take one or two to support their habit. The general public doesn’t realize how bad it is.”

To Lafferty, accountability on the part of parents and guardians is key.

“Keep count of your pills. Hide ‘em. Lock ‘em up. That way you don’t have to worry about your kid, your grandkid, or friend, or a neighbor, or brother or sister coming in and taking them.”

Aside from addiction and arrest, young adults who abuse prescription drugs also face a high risk of death. In 2014, more than 1,700 young adults died from prescription drug (mainly opioid) overdoses – more than young adults who died from overdoses of any other drug, including heroin and cocaine combined, according to information gathered and compiled by NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Powell said some kids start to use drugs because of peer-pressure, but that it is impossible to know for sure. Information compiled by the NIH names factors like experimentation, weight loss, relaxation and coping as reasons for prescription drug use in young adults.

“Students, they’re the only ones that know exactly why they turn to drugs,” she said. “Maybe a group that is out together and maybe somebody has pills and so then they pressure some of the others to take the drugs, and so they will.”

When it comes to drug prevention, Powell says she thinks it should begin even before preschool, which is when the local school district starts its anti-drug instruction.

“I think it needs to start at home,” she said. “I think that these parents need to set a good example for these kids. They’re their role model. I think they need to start at home telling them about prescription bottles and how those are only for the person they are prescribed for.”

“Get them accustomed to: ‘There are some things that you don’t touch.’ So I think (anti-drug instruction) needs to start at home at a very early age.”

Locally, Powell also cited issues in the community that correlate with prescription drug abuse in the country’s youth.

“You have parents that are maybe drug users. We have students where their parents are doing meth, are on prescription pain-killers, and (the kids) will see that and I think that influences (them) as well.”

“(The schools) are out to look out for our students and we all try to set a good example for our students when they’re with us and be role models for them. I think that’s what everybody should do.”

Powell said BCS trains its staff, especially the counselors, to recognize and know how to help the students if they come to them.

“We do bring in people that have more knowledge than we do, that are out there and can share with the students,” she added.

Lafferty speaks at schools and for groups and organizations every chance he gets.

“I try to do as many programs as they ask,” he said. “Anybody that asks me to come do a program, I’ll do it.

“I think the more people that (know) what’s going on in their community, the better off we are.”

Perkins writes for the Glasgow, Kentucky Daily Times.