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What is your teenager doing when you're not looking?

Drinking and driving? Smoking pot? Not wearing a seatbelt when someone else is driving? It could be all of them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted an anonymous survey of 16,000 U.S. high school students to find out the risks teens are taking. And the results are eye-popping.

In the 30 days prior to the survey, the teenagers admitted they had done these things:

• 41 percent drank alcohol.
  
• 28 percent rode in a car driven by someone who had been drinking alcohol.
  
• 20.8 percent smoked marijuana.
  
• 15.4 percent of high school seniors said they drank and drive.
  
• 9.7 percent said they rarely or never wore a seat belt while riding in a car driven by someone else.

While 21 percent admitted to smoking marijuana in the last month, an equal concern for parents should be the illegal use of prescription medication. Fully 23 percent of teenagers admitted on the CDC survey that at least once in their life they had taken a prescription drug that was prescribed to someone else.

According to U.S. News & World Report, the No. 1 prescription drugs of choice among teenagers are ADHD drugs, such as Adderal. Teen abuse of such drugs has risen 76 percent in the past eight years, according to a study published in Pediatrics. In addition, the third-most-popular drugs to abuse among teens are opioid drugs, such as OxyContin--again, widely prescribed to adults and easily found in the home medicine cabinet. Most teens figure parents won't notice if one or two pills are missing.

What's a parent to do? Keep all prescription medication out of reach, according to Jennifer Setlik, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "Parents need to keep a very close eye on medications," Setlik told U.S. News & World Report. "A locked cabinet would not be out of line." Locking up prescription drugs has another benefit, too, protecting younger children against accidental poisoning.

--From the Editors at Netscape