LEXINGTON, Ky. -- In tiny Bath County, nine people have died since August from overdoses of powerful pain pills that were prescribed by Florida doctors, including a mother and son who died just five months apart.
"They were all that I had. I tried to watch them as close as I could," said Floyd Chapman, referring to his mother, Barbara Robertson, dead at 53, and his brother, James Chapman, who died at age 35.
Floyd Chapman said he attempted to dissuade the pair from joining thousands of Kentuckians who travel in cars, vans and airplanes to South Florida's pain clinics. Once there, people get monthly prescriptions for hundreds of painkillers like oxycodone. Increasing numbers of Kentuckians are dying as a result.
Drug policy officials in Florida and Kentucky have not tracked the number of overdose deaths along the Interstate 75 pill pipeline. But coroners, physicians and law enforcement officers who are starting to tally the numbers say they are alarmed.
"It's epidemic. I don't know what the answer is. But it's got to stop," said Robert J. Powell, Bath County's coroner.
A combination of factors has led to the much-travelled Kentucky-Florida pipeline. Kentucky and 37 other states electronically monitor the number of narcotics prescriptions a person obtains from physicians. The Sunshine State has no such system. That has led to a proliferation of storefront medical clinics in Florida whose parking lots are filled with cars from Appalachian states and where doctors prescribe and dispense the often-abused drugs for cash.
A Herald-Leader survey of coroners in just three Kentucky counties — Montgomery, Rowan and Floyd — found that 14 people had overdosed on pain pills they obtained from Florida physicians in 2008.
Powell said that, in the past, he investigated about one fatal drug overdose a year in Bath County, where the population is just more than 11,000. Recently, he's seen about one a month.
Van Ingram, director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control, said he is surprised at how quickly the problem has grown.
"I never dreamed that it would be as big as it turned out to be," said Ingram, who said the problem has intensified in the last eight months. "We are hearing of thousands of Kentuckians going to Florida to get prescriptions and ... people going in droves to pharmacies in states along I-75 to get the prescriptions filled."
Death on the road
Not all the deaths connected to the Florida pain-pill phenomenon are overdoses.
In January, a Morehead man and his fiancée were found dead in their car at a Florida rest stop. The cause was carbon monoxide poisoning.
Sgt. Chuck Mulligan, a St. Johns County, Fla., sheriff's spokesman, said he has no evidence that Kenneth Oldham, 23, and Kayla Hinton, 22, had drugs or alcohol in their systems. But in their black Volkswagen Jetta was a bottle of pain pills prescribed by a South Florida physician and filled by a pharmacy there just before they died.
Mulligan said he did not know whom the prescription was for, but the information about the pills has been turned over to police in South Florida.
Denise Hamrick, Oldham's mother, said she did not know her son was in Florida until police came to tell her that he had died.
Hamrick says she hopes Florida passes a law that would require a prescription monitoring system.
"I think all states should pass the laws," Hamrick said.
At least one murder has been linked to the interstate pipeline. Brent Conn of Rowan County died of an overdose in a Florida motel room in 2007 after traveling to Florida in a car with Timothy Riggs of Bath County.
Call us today to discuss how the V.I.P. Way can free you from your opiate dependency and get your life back. Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353 Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine. Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Teens get hooked on prescription drugs from home
CHICO -- Behind the frightening numbers are the frightened faces of children, hundreds of them in Butte County, hooked on powerful drugs they get from their parents' medicine cabinets.
Authorities say the use of opiates -- which include Oxycontin, Fentanyl, Vicodin, Soma, Ritalin, cough syrups and any medication ending in "pam" -- are on the increase among Butte County youth.
Shelby Boston, with Butte County Children's Services Division, noted that in 2003 only 1 percent of children in foster care had or were endangered by opiate addictions.
In 2008 that number jumped to 4.3 percent. About half the children she sees with oxycodone problems also drink, Boston said.
About 9 percent of seniors in local high schools have tried opiates.
Retired chief probation officer Helen Harberts, now working with the District Attorney's Office, noted that "Addiction is a disease of the brain, and with youth, just about everything is about the brain."
Harberts, the lead-off speaker at a Chico forum Wednesday night discussing prescription drug use by adolescents, noted the brains of people under 25 aren't wired to always "think through potential outcomes."
When what Harberts referred to as "common sense deficit disorder" is combined with drugs, the outcome can be tragic and life-altering.
"Oxy is perhaps the most powerful prescription drug; it can take over the adolescent brain very quickly," she said. "The enemy is in your home, and in your medicine cabinets,"
Harberts told parents in the audience.
Reports of people missing prescribed medications, especially oxycodone, are common to police departments, but adults rarely suspect their children or grandchildren.
"We're seeing that 75 percent of prescription drugs used illegally by children are coming from their homes," said Chico police Sgt. Ford Porter. "They bring drugs to school to either use them, trade them, sell them or give them away," Porter said.
A small percentage of drugs children abuse have been legally prescribed to them by physicians.
Even when children are caught with drugs at school, Porter said parents usually seem puzzled about where they got them.
Porter mentioned a kind of underground exchange of drugs that was taking place recently between students at Pleasant Valley High in Chico and Paradise High. He said it wasn't discovered until a buyer at one of the schools became very ill from drug use.
Kellee Rhoades, a 17-year-old who now talks openly about a prescription drug habit that began when she was about 14, said she reacted typically to an opiate addition. "I kept it all inside, and it wasn't good for me," Rhoades said. "If I wasn't high, I was alone in my room."
Experts call the behavior "isolating."
"I think all I really needed at that point in my addiction was somebody to compassionately ask if I needed help," she said. "I didn't have anybody in my family in my home life, which was very dysfunctional, to do that for me," Rhoades said.
"When I turned 15 I was on a good number of substances. I broke into a house, and that ruined by teenage years," she said. "I'd do anything to get that time back."
Rhoades decided to seek help on her own, has been sober for a year, and is now enrolled at Butte College.
Cyla Nelson, a drug rehabilitation expert and assessor for a program called California Access to Recovery Effort, said she's seeing a third generation of prescription drug abusers in Butte County.
She noted parents often need help and support themselves, before they can help their children.
Rhoades said Nelson was among a handful of people to give her an encouraging word when she needed it most. Nelson and Rhoades have become friends outside of a clinical setting.
Chico police street crimes officer Kevin Hass observed that methamphetamine is still the drug of choice in Chico. "But if meth is the king, Oxycontin is the queen," he said.
District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he often gets calls from parents who ask him to be the heavy in trying to influence children they suspect of doing drugs. "I don't mind being the bogey man," he told his audience. "Please use me."
Ramsey explained the key to explaining law enforcement's role in drug abuse prevention is not to frighten people so much that they don't seek help.
Wednesday's forum was organized by Butte County Juvenile Court Judge Tamara Mosbarger and the Chico Unified School District.
Call us today to discuss how the V.I.P. Way can free you from your opiate dependency and get your life back. Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353 Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine. Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
Authorities say the use of opiates -- which include Oxycontin, Fentanyl, Vicodin, Soma, Ritalin, cough syrups and any medication ending in "pam" -- are on the increase among Butte County youth.
Shelby Boston, with Butte County Children's Services Division, noted that in 2003 only 1 percent of children in foster care had or were endangered by opiate addictions.
In 2008 that number jumped to 4.3 percent. About half the children she sees with oxycodone problems also drink, Boston said.
About 9 percent of seniors in local high schools have tried opiates.
Retired chief probation officer Helen Harberts, now working with the District Attorney's Office, noted that "Addiction is a disease of the brain, and with youth, just about everything is about the brain."
Harberts, the lead-off speaker at a Chico forum Wednesday night discussing prescription drug use by adolescents, noted the brains of people under 25 aren't wired to always "think through potential outcomes."
When what Harberts referred to as "common sense deficit disorder" is combined with drugs, the outcome can be tragic and life-altering.
"Oxy is perhaps the most powerful prescription drug; it can take over the adolescent brain very quickly," she said. "The enemy is in your home, and in your medicine cabinets,"
Harberts told parents in the audience.
Reports of people missing prescribed medications, especially oxycodone, are common to police departments, but adults rarely suspect their children or grandchildren.
"We're seeing that 75 percent of prescription drugs used illegally by children are coming from their homes," said Chico police Sgt. Ford Porter. "They bring drugs to school to either use them, trade them, sell them or give them away," Porter said.
A small percentage of drugs children abuse have been legally prescribed to them by physicians.
Even when children are caught with drugs at school, Porter said parents usually seem puzzled about where they got them.
Porter mentioned a kind of underground exchange of drugs that was taking place recently between students at Pleasant Valley High in Chico and Paradise High. He said it wasn't discovered until a buyer at one of the schools became very ill from drug use.
Kellee Rhoades, a 17-year-old who now talks openly about a prescription drug habit that began when she was about 14, said she reacted typically to an opiate addition. "I kept it all inside, and it wasn't good for me," Rhoades said. "If I wasn't high, I was alone in my room."
Experts call the behavior "isolating."
"I think all I really needed at that point in my addiction was somebody to compassionately ask if I needed help," she said. "I didn't have anybody in my family in my home life, which was very dysfunctional, to do that for me," Rhoades said.
"When I turned 15 I was on a good number of substances. I broke into a house, and that ruined by teenage years," she said. "I'd do anything to get that time back."
Rhoades decided to seek help on her own, has been sober for a year, and is now enrolled at Butte College.
Cyla Nelson, a drug rehabilitation expert and assessor for a program called California Access to Recovery Effort, said she's seeing a third generation of prescription drug abusers in Butte County.
She noted parents often need help and support themselves, before they can help their children.
Rhoades said Nelson was among a handful of people to give her an encouraging word when she needed it most. Nelson and Rhoades have become friends outside of a clinical setting.
Chico police street crimes officer Kevin Hass observed that methamphetamine is still the drug of choice in Chico. "But if meth is the king, Oxycontin is the queen," he said.
District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he often gets calls from parents who ask him to be the heavy in trying to influence children they suspect of doing drugs. "I don't mind being the bogey man," he told his audience. "Please use me."
Ramsey explained the key to explaining law enforcement's role in drug abuse prevention is not to frighten people so much that they don't seek help.
Wednesday's forum was organized by Butte County Juvenile Court Judge Tamara Mosbarger and the Chico Unified School District.
Call us today to discuss how the V.I.P. Way can free you from your opiate dependency and get your life back. Call today: (800)276-7021 or (702)308-6353 Email: info@rapiddetoxlasvegas.com Medical Director: Board-Certified by American Board of Anesthesiology 1994, former chief of cardiac anesthesia, University of Nevada School of Medicine. Board-Certified by American Board of Pain Medicine 1997, Clinical Assistant Professor University Nevada School of Medicine.
Authorities bust OxyContin ring
PORTSMOUTH — Authorities have arrested six people, including three Seacoast area residents, in connection with a drug trafficking scheme in which police say a Florida man shipped hundreds of OxyContin pills through the U.S. mail system to dealers for distribution in the Seacoast area.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in New Hampshire said the arrests Tuesday are part of a 11⁄2-year "Operation Pill Cash" investigation that included collaboration between federal authorities and the Somersworth Police Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Davis said the narcotics distribution ring from Florida to New Hampshire involved the shipping of more than 1,500 OxyContin pills through the U.S. Postal Service to dealers. The drugs would then be sold throughout the greater Seacoast area, authorities say.
"Essentially the pills would be shipped from Florida to the charged defendants by Express Mail, which means they would get there in two to three days. The reason many traffickers use that is it's quick and goes directly to the house," Davis said.
Nicholas Morton, 39, of Hollywood, Fla., was arrested at his home and was scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Florida.
Davis said Morton is the alleged supplier of the OxyContin — a highly addictive narcotic painkiller.
Matthew Chase, 27, and Richard Mancini, 28, both of Seabrook, Jeremy Stephenson, 26, of Epping, and Lawrence, Mass., residents Sara Jabour, 30, and John Denisco, 31, have also been arrested in connection with the alleged operation.
The six individuals are all charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute and the unlawful distribution of oxycodone, unlawful possession with the intent to distribute oxycodone, unlawful distribution of oxycodone and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
OxyContin is a brand name for oxycodone.
If convicted, the defendants could face prison terms in excess of 20 years and fines in excess of $1 million.
Davis would not discuss the details of the case, but said the recent bust is part of a greater effort to curb the trafficking of OxyContin from Florida to New Hampshire.
She described Florida as the "mecca" for OxyContin shipments, noting that it is often the origin of the drug when it is trafficked to New Hampshire and other New England states.
"We are seeing a lot of it in Florida," Davis said.
Davis said Morton would ship the drugs to the other five arrested parties for distribution and would also make trips to the Granite State.
The assistant U.S. Attorney noted that those trafficking drugs through the mail often conceal the pills in containers and place other items like toiletries in the boxes to make the drugs less detectable and the boxes themselves heavier.
"Operation Pill Cash" involved a joint investigation coordinated by the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office Drug Task Force and numerous local New Hampshire and Massachusetts police departments, including the Somersworth Police Department.
Davis declined to comment on exactly why Somersworth authorities were involved saying only they were a vital law enforcement partner lending resources to the effort.
She said authorities are unsure of where the drugs were specifically distributed.
Davis said judging from the "volume" of pills shipped to the area, they were likely sold throughout the Seacoast region.
"The increase in OxyContin use and addiction in New Hampshire and New England has been phenomenally on the rise over the past couple years. Law enforcement is taking a very active role in combating the increase in OxyContin trafficking," Davis said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in New Hampshire said the arrests Tuesday are part of a 11⁄2-year "Operation Pill Cash" investigation that included collaboration between federal authorities and the Somersworth Police Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Davis said the narcotics distribution ring from Florida to New Hampshire involved the shipping of more than 1,500 OxyContin pills through the U.S. Postal Service to dealers. The drugs would then be sold throughout the greater Seacoast area, authorities say.
"Essentially the pills would be shipped from Florida to the charged defendants by Express Mail, which means they would get there in two to three days. The reason many traffickers use that is it's quick and goes directly to the house," Davis said.
Nicholas Morton, 39, of Hollywood, Fla., was arrested at his home and was scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Florida.
Davis said Morton is the alleged supplier of the OxyContin — a highly addictive narcotic painkiller.
Matthew Chase, 27, and Richard Mancini, 28, both of Seabrook, Jeremy Stephenson, 26, of Epping, and Lawrence, Mass., residents Sara Jabour, 30, and John Denisco, 31, have also been arrested in connection with the alleged operation.
The six individuals are all charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute and the unlawful distribution of oxycodone, unlawful possession with the intent to distribute oxycodone, unlawful distribution of oxycodone and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
OxyContin is a brand name for oxycodone.
If convicted, the defendants could face prison terms in excess of 20 years and fines in excess of $1 million.
Davis would not discuss the details of the case, but said the recent bust is part of a greater effort to curb the trafficking of OxyContin from Florida to New Hampshire.
She described Florida as the "mecca" for OxyContin shipments, noting that it is often the origin of the drug when it is trafficked to New Hampshire and other New England states.
"We are seeing a lot of it in Florida," Davis said.
Davis said Morton would ship the drugs to the other five arrested parties for distribution and would also make trips to the Granite State.
The assistant U.S. Attorney noted that those trafficking drugs through the mail often conceal the pills in containers and place other items like toiletries in the boxes to make the drugs less detectable and the boxes themselves heavier.
"Operation Pill Cash" involved a joint investigation coordinated by the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office Drug Task Force and numerous local New Hampshire and Massachusetts police departments, including the Somersworth Police Department.
Davis declined to comment on exactly why Somersworth authorities were involved saying only they were a vital law enforcement partner lending resources to the effort.
She said authorities are unsure of where the drugs were specifically distributed.
Davis said judging from the "volume" of pills shipped to the area, they were likely sold throughout the Seacoast region.
"The increase in OxyContin use and addiction in New Hampshire and New England has been phenomenally on the rise over the past couple years. Law enforcement is taking a very active role in combating the increase in OxyContin trafficking," Davis said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
.jpg)
