Trading for a High

摘要

In the basement of a cape cod on a suburban street in northern New Jersey, a teenage boy turns to a friend and asks impatiently, "What did you get? I'll give you some of this"—indicating a bottle of Ritalin stuffed into the front pocket of his backpack—"for some of that painkiller." As a rap song plays just loud enough not to disturb the neighbors, his friend eyes the bottle suspiciously. "Is this generic, or is it the good stuff?" he asks. Upstairs, several teens are sitting at the kitchen table listening to a girl who looks to be about 15 tell how she got the narcotic Oxycontin from the medicine cabinet at home. "It was left over," she says, "from my sister's wisdom-teeth surgery."