The National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University made a study on 1,002 children aged between 12 and 17 years old. Many of them said they find it easier to obtain prescription drugs illegally than to buy beer, cigarettes of marijuana.

Among the prescription drugs that children are interested in there are OxyCodin, Percocet, Vicodin and Ritalin. 19% of the teenagers find it easier to take these drugs than to buy cigarettes or marijuana compared with the 13% last year.
43% of the 17-year-old teenagers say they could buy marijuana in one hour.

It seems that the major problem in this teenagers mental disability is represented by the parents who don’t know where are their children while they are at work and these “problem parents” identified by the study have increased the abuse of prescription drugs.

34% of the teenagers got the prescription drugs like Vicodin or OxyCodin from home.

"Half of the teenagers were saying they were out on school nights, but only 14 percent of the parents knew that they were out," the center’s director of special projects who led the study, Elizabeth Planet, reported for the Washington Post.
"There are lots of factors at play here. Parents are not paying attention. There are parents out at work,” she added with the deep concern about the teenagers’ problems.

According to the study, at least half of the teenagers who were out after 10 p.m. said they had spent time with people who were smoking and using drugs and 29% of the ones who went out between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. said the same thing.
The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora Volkow, said that the children think that the drugs are safe as long they are prescribed. Still, they are not aware on the overdose.