More teenagers in New York are getting high on prescription drugs than street drugs, according to a study released yesterday.

The trend replicates a nationwide increase in prescription drug abuse, according to the study, conducted by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. According to the study, nearly one in five teenagers nationwide reported abusing prescription medications, making prescription drugs the second most commonly abused illegal drugs among teenagers, after marijuana.

“This is attractive to young people, we found in the study, because they think it’s safer,” the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, John Walters, said during a videoconference with reporters convened in Manhattan.

Officials said abuse of prescription drugs among teenagers in New York is most popular upstate. The majority of teenagers steal drugs from medicine cabinets at home or get drugs from friends. In New York City, the three most popular prescription drugs sold on the street are Elavil, Xanax, and Vicodin.

“It’s a dangerous epidemic,” the editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine, Ann Shoket, said. Seventeen, which featured a teenager who died from a prescription drug overdose on the cover of its March issue, partnered with the White House to release the study.