Pills haven’t yet replaced pot as the top illicit drug of choice for high school-age teenagers, but they are gaining.

The rise of prescription drug abuse among teens continues to be a concern, while cigarette smoking and methamphetamine use have reached historic lows, according to a federally-funded survey.

Steady declines in marijuana use among teens have stalled, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported last week in its 2009 “Monitoring the Future Survey.” Use of marijuana by students in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades has been dropping since the mid-1990s.

“So far, we have not seen any dramatic rise in marijuana use, but the upward trending of the past two or three years stands in stark contrast to the steady decline that preceded it for nearly a decade,” said University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnston, the study’s principal investigator.

The study, conducted annually since 1975, surveyed 46,097 students in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades in 389 public and private schools.

In Hall County schools, students in the sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades take the Georgia Student Health Survey, which asks questions about drug use. Students take the survey anonymously.

Hall County Safe and Drug-Free Schools Coordinator Carol Ann Ligon said the local results largely mirror the national survey.

“I think it holds true to what we’re seeing locally,” Ligon said. “Prescription drug use has increased, and I think certainly we’re seeing that across the board.”

Nationally, 1 in 10 in high school seniors reported using the painkiller Vicodin for nonmedical reasons, and 1 in 20 reported using the powerful opioid Oxycontin.

Flowery Branch High School sophomore Rebecca Benton says she believes the reason students are increasingly turning to prescription drugs is “they’re easy to get a hold of, it’s easy to hide the high and also easier to hide the drugs.”

Some students raid their parents’ medicine cabinets for drugs like Oxycontin or the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, or swap pills with other students prescribed the stimulant Adderall, used for treatment of attention-deficit disorders.

“I don’t think some parents realize prescription drugs are being abused as much as they are by some students,” Benton said.

Ligon said the school system is planning programs for the coming year they hope will foster a dialogue between parents about teen drug use.

“Parents have really got to help us at the high school level,” Ligon said. “We know (students) have heard the message in kindergarten through eighth grade. But in high school it becomes much more of a partnership between the school and the parents.”

Marijuana is the most widely used of all illicit drugs. In 2009, marijuana use in the prior 12 months was reported by about 12 percent of the nation’s eighth-graders, 27 percent of 10th-graders and a third of 12th-graders.

The proportions saying they used any illicit drug in the past year are 15 percent, 29 percent and 37 percent, respectively, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The rate of cigarette smoking among teens is the lowest since the survey began in 1975. Just more than 11 percent of high school seniors describe themselves as daily smokers, less than half of the 24.6 percent rate of 1997.

“I think the big thing with cigarette smoking is for a long time it was the cool thing to do, but there’s been so much research that students know how unhealthy it is,” said Benton, 15. “I don’t think students think it’s even worth it.”

Methamphetamine use has dropped from 4.7 percent among seniors when it was first added as a question in the national survey in 1999 to 1.2 percent today.

“I’ve never heard of anyone at our school using it,” Benton said. “I think it’s more of an adult drug. I think it’s also another drug where people are highly aware of the dangers.”