Students as young as 11 can get birth control in Maine city

Last update: October 18, 2007 - 8:34 PM

School officials in Portland, Maine, on Thursday defended a decision to allow children as young as 11 to obtain birth-control pills at a middle-school health center, saying the new policy is aimed at a tiny number of sexually active students.

King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine, and apparently one of only a few in the nation, to make a full range of contraception available, including birth-control pills and patches. Students would need parental permission to use the city-run health center in the school, but they wouldn't have to tell them they were seeking birth control.

Portland's three middle schools had seven pregnancies in the last five years, said Douglas Gardner, director of Portland's Health and Human Services Department. He said early reports of 17 pregnancies in the last four years were wrong.

ADDICT SUPERVISION

San Francisco health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation's first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.

Hoping to reduce the city's high rate of fatal drug overdoses, the public health department co-sponsored a symposium on the only such facility in North America, a 4-year-old Vancouver site where an estimated 700 users a day self-administer narcotics under nurse supervision.

Organizers of the daylong forum, which also included a coalition of nonprofit health and social-service groups, acknowledge it could take years to get an injection facility up and running. Along with legal hurdles, such an effort would be almost sure to face political opposition.

KIDS' COLD MEDICINES

Citing deaths, hallucinations, seizures and heart-rhythm disturbances, doctors Thursday called on a joint U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel to forbid the use of over-the-counter medications for kids up to age 6.

If panelists agree the drugs should be tightly restricted, the decision could have an impact on the availability of nonprescription cough and cold products for older children.

Two influential FDA advisory committees were scheduled to vote today on the drugs' fate. Some doctors have asked the agency to reconsider rules on the remedies, saying conclusions about the effects of such products on children were largely extrapolated from studies involving adults.

Last week, several major drugmakers withdrew 14 pediatric cough and cold drugs for kids up to age 2. And the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents makers of nonprescription drugs, advocated withdrawing remaining infant cough and cold formulas.

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