Last month, 13 Hillsboro teenagers met in a park to take over-the-counter and prescription drugs, in some cases along with alcohol. One girl succumbed to seizures, and several teens were hospitalized. No one died. Ascribe that to dumb luck. Why did the teens play Russian roulette with their lives? Blame it on their as yet unformed brains, on youthful feelings of invulnerability, on ignorance, boredom, peer influence or all of them combined. Sad to say, as shocking as the story is, it is distressingly common.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, abuse of prescription drugs now causes more deaths from overdoses than drugs like heroin and cocaine. Nationally, the rate of deaths from prescription painkillers increased by 150 percent between 1999 and 2004.

In one two-day span last April two young men and a young woman died of overdoses of drugs that included prescription methadone used to control pain, Fentanyl, another potent painkiller and alcohol. In 2007 in New Hampshire, 128 people were killed in traffic accidents and 168 died from overdoses, up from 142 the year before.

Sometimes the drugs are stolen. Often they're purchased from someone who has obtained them by doctor shopping. Addicts and entrepreneurs feign hard to diagnose pain problems to get prescriptions for painkillers that when misused or taken in combination with other drugs can be fatal. But when very young people are involved, the drugs often come from home medicine cabinets or are obtained, as was the case with the Prozac used by the Hillsboro teens, from someone with a prescription.

The police have begun prosecuting people who give or sell prescriptions drugs when a death occurs. That's put a small dent in the problem. But teens are also experimenting by taking large quantities of over-the-counter drugs. In Hillsboro, the drug was Benadryl, an antihistamine that in high doses can cause sleepiness, confusion, blurred vision, hallucinations, seizures and even death.

In the upcoming legislative session, concerned lawmakers will make a fourth attempt to convince their colleagues that New Hampshire should join the more than 30 states that have instituted electronic prescription drug monitoring programs. Such programs allow doctors to see whether patients are seeking multiple prescriptions for the same problem or allow investigators to flag doctors when they see signs of doctor shopping or prescription forgery.

If strictly controlled to protect privacy, such programs can help identify doctor shoppers and physicians who may be prescribing dangerous drugs too casually. Lawmakers should pass the bill.

In hopes of teaching the teens how risky their experimentation was, the head of Hillsboro's youth services department offered free drug and alcohol intervention classes to the youths through their parents. Not one signed up. All but one of the teens was a minor, so parents may have decided not to enroll their child in the classes, not because they were unconcerned, but to protect their privacy. But reckless drug experimentation requires more of a response than parental lectures and discipline. We hope that the parents of every child involved seek professional help for their teens. If not, they too are playing Russian roulette with a child's life.