OxyContin Invasion

IN NEIGHBORHOODS, MOURNING THE LIVES LOST TO A LEGAL DRUG

A False Perception Of Safety Swiftly Ends With Addiction

On Jan. 18, parishioners at St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church mourned the
death of Lauren Meehan, a bubbly 18-year-old training to be a medical
technician.

Meehan had spent much of her childhood chastising her drug-addicted mother.
So the teenager's family was stunned when authorities blamed her death on
abuse of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, a growing drug scourge on
the streets of the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Fishtown, Kensington and
Port Richmond.

Her childhood friend, Eddie Bisch, 18, was among those at her funeral. Days
later, Meehan's sister Erin, 17, confronted Bisch about Oxy, the pills that
neighborhood teenagers were chewing for a heroin-like high.

"Don't take them," she begged him. "My sister died from them."

But Bisch dismissed her, she said. "I can control myself," he insisted.
Then he added: "Your sister didn't control it. She took a lot."

A few weeks later, Bisch, too, was dead. He was the third teenager St.
Anne's parish would bury in just over a month who died after abusing OxyContin.

The drug spread quickly on the streets of Philadelphia's river wards,
residents said. And the death toll grew. Just three days after Lauren
Meehan died, authorities said, OxyContin killed Dawn Weber, 28, a mother of
four who lived around the corner from Eddie Bisch.

Dr. Richard G. Paolino of Bensalem is scheduled for trial Monday in Bucks
County Court, accused of writing most of the prescriptions that brought
OxyContin to these neighborhoods. State Attorney General Mike Fisher says
Paolino was "the number-one source of supply for that area."

Paolino is not charged with causing any deaths. The charges, which he
denies, are illegal delivery of a controlled substance, forgery, and
practicing medicine without a license.

Meehan and Bisch stood out in the neighborhood, two young people with big
dreams for their futures. But they also experimented with the pills.

Residents say the drug they know as Oxy emerged last summer, becoming so
popular that a dealer could be found on nearly every corner. Many just
bought, never questioning the source. But street talk buzzed about a Bucks
County doctor.

Scores of neighbors hustled up Interstate 95 to Paolino's office. In
interviews and affidavits, several said they paid him up to $85 cash for
cursory visits to get his prescriptions. Dawn Weber, 28, and her cousin
went to Bensalem on Jan. 17.

Two days later, Weber died in her sleep of OxyContin-related drug
intoxication. The bottle of OxyContin that Paolino had prescribed for her
cousin was found in the jacket Weber wore the day before, drug agents and
family members said. The cousin, who would not allow her name to be used
for this story, said she had shared that prescription with Weber.

Police say that OxyContin abusers such as Weber tend to have a false
perception of safety.

"They don't view themselves as a junkie because they're not using a
needle," said Lt. Christine Coulter, of the Philadelphia Police Narcotics
Intelligence Unit. "But it's just as deadly. They don't see it."

One 18-year-old, a recovering OxyContin addict, said the pills carry no
stigma. "It's weird, because the kids in my neighborhood think if you're on
heroin, you're a junkie. You're no good. You're the filth of the earth.

"If you do Oxys, it's not that bad."

A Troubled Childhood

Lauren Meehan was a naive and funny teenager who loved elderly people. She
graduated from Hallahan High School in Center City last year and was
training to work with the elderly at the Thompson Institute, a University
City occupational school.

Meehan had had a tumultuous childhood, dealing with her mother's drug
abuse, her family said. As a young girl, she often told her seven siblings
that Mommy was doing something bad.

"For so many years, she would be right in her face to her mother," said
Meehan's grandmother, Theresa Meehan. "She knew what [her mother] was
doing. It was surprising that she would even try any of this stuff."

Last fall, Meehan's life began to look up.

Her mother was no longer using drugs, family members say. And Meehan moved
in with her boyfriend in Port Richmond.

When she needed Christmas money, Meehan went to work as a cashier at
Esterson's, a Fishtown drugstore owned by pharmacist Ron Hyman. Months
before, it was Hyman who had warned authorities that Paolino was writing
dangerous OxyContin prescriptions.

On Jan. 12, Meehan worked a night shift at Esterson's. Her family believes
she bought OxyContin on the street and ingested it later that night with
her boyfriend's cousin.

The next morning, a friend found the two dead.

A Move From The City, And Back

Eddie Bisch grew up only doors away from Meehan, but his divorced father
moved with Eddie and his younger sister to Cinnaminson three years ago to
escape developing blight and drug problems.

Bisch and his sister, Christi, now 16, hated South Jersey. They couldn't
walk anywhere; they missed their friends. Their father, Ed Bisch, said he
hated seeing his children unhappy and moved them back a year ago to live
with his parents, natives of the Fishtown-Kensington area.

There, his son was happier, staying out late, hanging out with friends on
the corner, then staying up in his third-floor bedroom, listening to Jimi
Hendrix. He was to graduate from Kensington High School in June and planned
to attend culinary school.

Bisch and his friends got into Oxy, one friend said, usually taking it with
other drugs such as Xanax, which they bought for $2 a pill. Occasionally,
he and Meehan did Oxy together.

On Feb. 18, the friend said, he and Bisch each took five Xanax pills and
drank beer. Later, they split a 40-milligram OxyContin tablet. Bisch kept
stumbling and falling asleep.

Said another friend who saw Bisch: "I knew I should have said something,
but I didn't because you don't want to be a friend that spoils the fun."

Bisch came home, walked upstairs, and fell asleep in the bathroom.

His sister, thinking he was drunk, dragged him into his room. He was
breathing heavily as he lay on the bed.

The next morning, Christi Bisch found her brother, still and purple. A
coroner declared that he died from an adverse reaction to OxyContin and Xanax.

After police were called, Bisch's friends stood outside the house, crying.
One called Erin Meehan, who weeks earlier had told Bisch to stop.

"You're kidding," she said into the receiver.

A Cousin Shares Her Drugs

Dawn Weber had heard talk of the 16-mile drive to Paolino's office.

"The word sprouted out so quick that this doctor was giving everybody
pills," said Joseph Moreno, 29, Weber's fiance. "Everyone said, 'Everybody
sitting in [Paolino's office] was from my neighborhood.' . . . The people
in this neighborhood who sell pills started sending people up, paying for
their visits."

As pharmacists, including Hyman, caught on, the pills became harder to get.
Weber's cousin said she went to at least 60 pharmacies in the city and
suburbs over four months to get Paolino's prescriptions filled.

In an interview, the cousin said she first learned of Paolino from
relatives and first visited him in October. She told him her back hurt. She
said Paolino used a machine to measure her pain, telling her she might have
a bulging disc or spinal meningitis.

On subsequent visits, she said, her prescriptions were filled out and ready
to go: OxyContin and Xanax, 120 pills of each.

Weber lived with Moreno in a rowhouse filled with children. The cousin
lived with them. The couple had a son, 5, and two daughters, ages 6 and 9;
Weber had a son, 11, from a previous relationship.

She was a single mother while Moreno spent 1995 to 1999 in prison on a drug
conviction. When he was released, Weber worked part-time with him, towing cars.

Weber would admit she was not perfect, but she wanted her children to do
better. She smoked, but once punished her son for smoking a cigarette. She
rarely drank, but her father's death in December was hard, and liquor
helped her cope, Moreno said.

Weber told Moreno about the trip she and her cousin made to Paolino's that
Wednesday, Jan. 17.

" 'You should have seen everyone in the doctor's office,' " Moreno said she
told him. " 'It was mostly everyone from this neighborhood.' "

The cousin said she and Weber hit at least 15 pharmacies Wednesday and
Thursday before they found a pharmacist to fill the prescriptions, at a
nearby Rite Aid.

Thursday night, they went to Chuckles, a local bar. The cousin said she and
Weber both took OxyContin that night. Weber's grandfather eventually
brought her home. Moreno said that he woke up at 3 a.m. and that his
fiancee was alive, beside him in bed.

But when he arose at 7:30 a.m., she was dead. Moreno searched her clothes
and found the cousin's nearly empty OxyContin prescription bottle. A
coroner ruled that she died of drug intoxication.

Still, The Drug Flows

Dawn Weber was among 39 people in Philadelphia to die by mid-year of causes
related to oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin. Of those, 11 were
killed by OxyContin, coroners said. The city had 41 oxycodone-related
deaths in all of 2000.

Narcotics officers say OxyContin has emerged in other city neighborhoods
and in the suburbs.

And Bisch's neighbors say the drug still flows through the area, a part of
the landscape. Oxy sales can go unnoticed amid the swirl of children
playing, teenagers laughing, and grandparents sitting on their front steps.

"When that Dr. Paolino got popped, [prices] did go up," said Rick Mulharan,
34, a recovering OxyContin addict who lives in Port Richmond. "But [the
pills] are plentiful again."

Drug agents agree. Paolino's arrest dried up the neighborhood OxyContin
supply so much, they said, that the pills' street value jumped from about
50 cents to $1 a milligram. The supply has since increased, they say.

But several of Bisch's friends say they have not done Oxy since his death.

"I just realized it is as dangerous as they say it is," said the friend who
split the pill with Bisch. "I never knew half of an Oxy 40 could do that to
anyone. . . . I feel like in a way one thing I could take from [Eddie]
dying would be to honor him. To stop."

Meanwhile, Paolino has been jailed since March. Not long after his arrest,
someone taped a note to his office door. From letters cut up from
newspapers, it read: "FREE OUR DOC."

A Father Hopes To Educate

Eddie Bisch's father, Ed Bisch, 37, is now a crusader.

Since his son's death, he has spent most of his time learning about
OxyContin and sharing with anyone who will listen.

Though uncomfortable in the spotlight, he has pleaded his case on talk
shows, in newspapers, and in schools. And Bisch, who makes his living
fixing computers, now has a Web site, www.oxyabusekills.com, for news and
victims' photos.

Bisch has appeared with representatives from OxyContin manufacturer Purdue
Pharma at a neighborhood meeting to educate against abuse.

And he talks to Eddie, every day.

"Sometimes I look up and I say, 'Why?' " he said. "He didn't do anything
that my friends and I didn't do. But the consequences today are so much
greater."

Around the corner, Moreno has only told his children that their mother
died. One day, he said, he will explain what really happened.

The couple's son, Pepe, 5, recently sat in the living room and pointed to a
photo of his mother, adorned with a crucifix. "That's my mom," he said.

He pointed heavenward. "She's up there."