Law enforcement officials say that it is necessary to classify inhalants as intoxicants, so that a driver with a huffing addiction will be taken off the road and put into a treatment program in the same manner as alcoholics or narcotics addicts.

The “junkie” stereotype has given way to a new class of addicts who are higher-income, more educated and seemingly more well-adjusted.

Known in some circles as “sizzurp,” “purple drank” or “dirty sprite,” the mixture of prescription cough syrup with codeine, benzodiazepines and a soft drink has been used and sung about by rappers since the mid-1990s.

At the second annual Arkansas Prescription Drug Abuse Summit, the nation’s drug czar told participants that substance abuse is a chronic brain disease and should be treated as such.

Topiramate, a drug used to treat epilepsy and recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for weight loss, has been shown to help people addicted to both cocaine and alcohol reduce their dependency on the substances.

While alcohol is the most commonly abused substance in the state according to The Associated Press (AP), public health officials are beginning to pay more attention to prescription medications misuse which is considered to be at epidemic levels by the CDC.

In a report commissioned by the American Society of Addiction Medicine, it was discovered that only 28 state Medicaid agencies cover all three of medications that the Food and Drug Administration has approved for opioid addiction treatment.

In a startling investigation conducted by Oklahoma City CBS affiliate KWTV, reporters found that prescription drug use by pilots may have been a contributing factor in six out of the 15 plane crashes in Oklahoma that occurred between 2008 and 2010.