teens popping lots of pills...

NEW YORK - Teen smoking and drinking continued to drop, but teenage abuse of prescription drugs has become "an entrenched behavior" that many parents fail to recognize, a survey released Tuesday showed.

For a third straight year, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America study showed that about 1 in 5 teens have tried prescription drug painkillers such as Vicodin or OxyContin to get high — about 4.5 million teens. It also indicated that many teens feel experimenting with prescription drugs is safer than illegal highs.