American teenagers are now more likely to get high from Vicodin than heroin, according to a recent study.

The study was released Thursday by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. It reported that for the first time, teenagers are more prone to use prescription and over-the-counter medication to get high than many other illicit drugs.

According to the "Generation Rx" study, 18 percent of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 reported using Vicodin, a prescription painkiller, to get high. Ten percent said they have used the prescription painkiller OxyContin and 10 percent have used a prescription stimulant like Ritalin.

"For the first time, our study has found they're more likely to have abused prescription painkillers to get high than other drugs," said Meghan Gutierrez, assistant director of public affairs for the organization. She said the data is from the last six months of 2004.

Compared with the teens who reported abusing prescription drugs, 9 percent used cocaine or crack, 8 percent used methamphetamine and 4 percent used heroin. Marijuana and inhalants are the only drugs teens reported using to get high from more than prescription medication, the report stated.

Gutierrez said the partnership plans to conduct further research on how and why teenagers are turning to prescription drugs to get high in greater numbers.

One reason over-the-counter and prescription drugs are surpassing illegal ones like heroin and LSD is their accessibility, according to Cpl. Pat Cullen, a school resource officer at Clinton High School in Clinton, Iowa, who has dealt with teenage prescription drug abuse multiple times.

"One teacher caught a group of kids passing medication back and forth," Cullen said. "We've seen this a little bit here and there but never to this magnitude."

Cullen said prescription drug abuse would be even more difficult to detect in a larger community like Milwaukee because the drugs would be easier to hide. Only 28,000 people live in Clinton. There were over 586,000 people in Milwaukee in 2003, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Web site.

Gutierrez agreed detecting prescription and over-the-counter drugs could pose a major problem.

"How do you identify it?" she said. "It's not like alcohol or even marijuana, things that law enforcement are trained to detect."

One thing the Partnership for a Drug-Free America is working to identify is exactly where teenagers are getting the prescription drugs.

Research suggests they come from a variety of places, including illegal Internet sales or crossing the border into Mexico, a problem in southern states. But Gutierrez said teens are most likely to find and abuse the medicine much closer to home.

"More often they're getting it from their own parents' medicine cabinets or their friends' medicine cabinets," she said.

The partnership's study concerned teenagers between 12 and 17, and there has not been much research on whether the trend holds true for college-age students, according to Gutierrez.

Sharon Fisher, communications coordinator for the American College Health Association, said most research on college students' drug use currently centers on club drugs, such as ecstasy, and marijuana.

But Cullen said he would not be surprised if research eventually proved prescription drug abuse to be a problem for college students as well.

"It's probably not only a high school thing," he said.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 28 2005.