“A different monster” has become a serious problem among Warren County youth, a local law-enforcement officer told Vicksburg Rotarians Thursday.

“It’s no longer marijuana, cocaine, or methamphetamines,” said Deputy Sheriff Randy Lewis, who was the guest speaker at this week’s Rotary Club meeting. “It’s the kind of drugs we all have sitting in our medicine cabinets right now.”

Lewis, a 14-year officer here, said that during his time he has seen drug trends change often. Ten years ago, he noted, it was the boom in methamphetamines, which remain a fixture in the drug scene. But over the last couple of years, he said the craze has become prescription drugs, such as Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin, and Loritab, and some of their abusers aren’t even in their teen years.

“We’ve found kids as young as 11 and 12 years old to be abusing these drugs,” Lewis said.

According to Lewis, the drugs have become accessible to youngsters not only because of their place in the family medicine cabinet, but also due to youth who have legitimate prescriptions and sell what they don’t need or don’t use.

In his speech, one of Lewis’ key points to solving the crisis was community involvement.

“We as law enforcement can’t do anything for this problem unless we’re getting phone calls,” he said. “We’ve got to have information from the community to work against this.”

Other points were locking up family medicine cabinets and educating teens about the harmful effects the drugs pose. Lewis said that about 9 out of 10 teens don’t even know the kinds of drugs they’re ingesting. He also noted that they aren’t just taking one pill at a time.

“They’re taking pills by the handful, snorting them and mixing them with alcohol or other drugs. The main reason we’re putting such a concerted effort toward this problem is youth fatalities,” Lewis said.