Gone are the days when teens used to catch their drug fix in the back of an alley or on a street corner. Nowadays, most are looking no further than their parents' medicine cabinet to get high.

A new study released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America on Thursday revealed that America's teens are now becoming a pill-popping nation, snagging prescription drugs and over-the-counter meds to score a fix.

"A new category of substance abuse is emerging in America. For the first time, our national study finds that 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, 'Generation Rx' has arrived," Roy Bostock, chairman of the Partnership, said in a statement.

The study — based on a survey of 7,300 teenagers — found that as many as one in five between the ages of 12 to 17 (nearly 4.4 million nationwide) admit taking prescription painkillers, such as Vicodin, at least once in the past year. One in 10, or 2.3 million, report taking a prescription stimulant like Ritalin, and another one in 11 (2.2 million) have abused over-the-counter medication like cough syrup to get high. The average age for users to start is now between 13 and 14 years old, and the younger a child begins experimenting with medication, the more likely they are to develop a drug habit.

"That amount came about so quickly that it was rather stunning to those of us who watch it in the field," said Tom Hedrick, director and founding member of the Partnership. Given the alarming results of the study, additional research was commissioned to better understand teens' awareness and attitudes towards substance abuse. The findings were almost as shocking. Nearly half of all teens believe using prescription drugs to get high is significantly safer than using street drugs, and close to one-third think painkillers are not addictive. Teens also cited ease of access to the drugs as a dominant factor in their popularity.

Hedrick said a great danger lies in the fact that teens aren't just abusing one prescription drug, but many (a term called "poly-drug abuse"), and some will pair a drug with alcohol. "When abused or taken in higher doses than recommended, [these drugs] can be dangerous to the point of being lethal," he said. Although there are no hard statistics yet, Hedrick says most teens pop at least double the recommended dosage. As for cold medicine, some kids down two or three bottles in a sitting to achieve an opiate-like high.

"Kids today are much more sophisticated than most adults are," warned Hedrick. "We're so behind the curve here." Instead of relying on word of mouth to get details about new ways to get high, teens are now relying on instant messaging, chat rooms and the Internet for their information. "One teen can stumble across something, and within 36 hours, over 100,000 kids can know about it. Teens have this enormous urge to reach out and tell as many people as they can about what they find, and that can happen overnight, which is not the way we've seen the spread of drugs [in the past]," he said. "It's a new era."

Unless parents are willing to step up to the plate to educate their child, the situation will only grow more dire. "Adolescent abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications represents one of the most significant developments in substance abuse trends in recent memory," Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership, said in a statement. "Educating parents and teens about the risks of abusing medications will be exceptionally challenging, but it clearly must be done."