HIGH TIME FOR 'GEN RX'

One in five teenagers has popped Vicodin, OxyContin or some other
prescription painkiller to get high, a shocking new study has revealed.

And, just as disturbing, today's teens can get those drugs almost
effortlessly -- simply by raiding their parents' medicine cabinets,
according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

"A new category of substance abuse is emerging in America: Increasingly,
teenagers are getting high through the intentional abuse of medications,"
said Roy Bostock, chairman of the Partnership.

"For the first time . . . today's teens are more likely to have abused a
prescription painkiller to get high than they are to have experimented with
a variety of illicit drugs -- including Ecstasy, cocaine, crack and LSD.

"In other words," Bostock said, " 'Generation Rx' has arrived."

The 2004 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, released yesterday, found the
most popular prescription drug misused by teens to be Vicodin, with 18
percent -- or about 4.3 million kids -- admitting to having used it on
purpose to get high.

One in 10 also admitted recreational use of OxyContin -- the drug Rush
Limbaugh was addicted to -- and Ritalin or Adderall, normally used as
treatment for attention-deficit disorder.

And one in 11 said they had even used such over-the-counter products as
cough medicine to catch a buzz.

What's more, some 48 percent of those quizzed said they saw no great risk
in fooling around with prescription medicines -- believing them, in fact,
to be "much safer" than street drugs.

And close to a third said they did not consider prescription painkillers to
be addictive.

When asked why prescription-medicine abuse was increasing among their
peers, teenagers cited "ease of access" -- specifically, the medicine
cabinets of their parents or their friends' parents.

The survey did include some optimistic notes. For one thing, the number of
teens reporting marijuana use declined from 42 percent six years ago to 37
percent last year. And, during that period, Ecstasy use fell from 12 to 9
percent and methamphetamine use from 12 to 8 percent.

The study surveyed more than 7,300 teenagers, making it the largest ongoing
analysis of teen attitudes toward drugs in the country. Its margin of error
is plus or minus 1.5 percent.