HOW ONE TOWN GOT HOOKED ON OXYCONTIN

Hazard, KY, Has Seen Its Share Of Hard Times - But Nothing Prepared The
Gritty Hamlet For The Onslaught Of The Drug OxyContin - Now The Abuse Is An
Epidemic

No one could blame Joshua Coots for wanting to escape. Bored and
frustrated, the pale, soft-spoken teen felt trapped in the tiny town of
Hazard, Ky. The place didn't offer him many options. Left behind by the
economic boom, the town of 5,500 still depends largely on the aging coal
and timber industries. Empty storefronts dot the depressed Main Street.
Highway strip malls are about the only places left to go for a night out.
Coots couldn't imagine a lifetime hauling logs or toiling in the mines,
where his father once worked. Instead, he took a job as a telemarketer. In
his off hours he hung out with friends in the park, smoking pot and popping
pills. The drugs were a mild distraction, but did little for his mood. Then
someone gave him the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin. When
crushed, the pills delivered a euphoric, heroin-like punch. "I don't know
how to explain the buzz," says Coots, now 21. "It's just this utopic
feeling. You feel like you can conquer the world... It's a better high than
anything else."

Coots was hooked. He started out with a modest 20mg, but before long, he
says, he needed 400mg just to make it through the day. And that took money.
OxyContin is known as the poor man's heroin, but at a street price of $1
per milligram it can be anything but cheap. Coots quit his job and spent
all his time in pursuit of the precious pills. Each morning began with an
orange 40mg tablet, which he downed before getting out of bed. "I couldn't
hardly walk if I didn't have it." At first he crushed and snorted the
pills, after sucking on them to remove the time-release coating. Later he
dissolved the powder in water and injected it for a quicker buzz. He
floated through the days in a dreamlike stupor, not even bothering to eat.
His waist dropped from 42 inches to 36 inches in two months. As his
cravings got worse, he found creative ways to get hold of the pills.
Sometimes he would fake back pain and get a shady local doctor to write him
an Oxy prescription. Once, he even stole the pills from his grandfather,
who was taking them to dull the pain from a fractured spine. "I had to have
more and more," he says.

These days, nearly everyone in Hazard has an OxyContin horror story to
tell. In the last year, local officials say, the drug has swept through the
small town, wrecking lives and destroying families. Precise statistics are
hard to pin down, but the number of local addicts runs in the hundreds. Oxy
abuse cuts across income and age lines. Teens meet for Oxy parties in the
park. Miners blow their paychecks to feed their addictions. Even
grandmothers peddle their prescriptions for quick cash. In February police
rounded up more than 200 Oxy dealers in Hazard and surrounding counties,
the largest drug bust in state history. Hazard's crime rate has soared; the
jail is packed with Oxy-addicted inmates. In nearby Harlan, Judge Ron
Johnson sentenced a woman to 10 years in prison for selling just four of
the pills. OxyContin is "a pure scourge upon the land," he fumed from the
bench. It is, he said, "demonic fire."

Hazard isn't the only place struggling to quell the flames. Oxy has taken
hold in other rural Appalachian states and in New England, places where
it's tougher to get more familiar street drugs like heroin and crack. The
drug's maker, Purdue Pharma, says it is appalled by the widespread abuse of
the drug, a form of synthetic morphine. "When this drug is used properly,
it has the potential to save lives. When it's abused, it has the potential
to take lives, just like any other strong medication," says Dr. J. David
Haddox, Purdue Pharma's medical director. In an effort to stem the damage,
Purdue has held workshops for doctors and met with the DEA and officials
from five states. The company is even researching new drugs that would be
more tamper-proof and less addictive. But those efforts are years away from
pharmacy shelves. Hazard isn't willing to wait. In recent months police and
community activists have joined forces to get OxyContin off the streets,
and out of their town.

That could prove difficult. Hazard has a long tradition of self-medication.
Moonshine and marijuana, grown in its fertile soil, have long helped to
blot out depression, boredom, even physical pain. Eastern Kentucky has one
of the nation's highest cancer rates, and many residents suffer from
chronic mining and timber injuries. OxyContin seemed like the most potent
antidote yet to the local despair. "If there's ever been a drug made that
will knock depression out for the short term, it's OxyContin," says
therapist Mike Spare. "The euphoria sucks you in."

When the then police chief, Rod Maggard, first heard about Oxy in the
summer of 1999, he had to ask his pharmacist what it was. But by spring, he
knew all too well what the drug was doing to his town. Burglaries and
domestic-violence reports were up. Overdoses were mounting at the local
hospital. (State police count 19 OxyContin-related deaths in Kentucky this
year alone. Purdue Pharma disputes the number.) Maggard, 57, who retired as
police chief in March, was flooded with hundreds of calls from families
begging him to help get a son or daughter off the drug. "I have never seen
anything take off like this did," says Maggard, a square-shouldered,
gray-haired cop. "It has mushroomed." On the wood-paneled wall above him
hangs a prized painting called "The Protector"--an image of Jesus with his
hand on the hood of a flashing police cruiser.

Maggard was especially outraged that the town's sole refuge, leafy,
peaceful Perry County Park, had become an open-air drug market. Clusters of
teens and young adults jammed the parking lot near the Little League
fields, lining up to buy Oxy. "Nobody wanted to get stoned. Nobody wanted
to get drunk. Everybody wanted to go get an OC and sit in the park," says
Holly, a recovering addict who's now 21. Girls carried ceramic bathroom
tiles in their purses so they could be ready to crush a pill anywhere, any
time. In a futile effort to control the trade, Maggard patrolled the
grounds in his unmarked car, installed surveillance cameras and had the
park gates locked late at night. Nothing seemed to work. When addicts
started referring to the park as "Pillville," Maggard called in the Feds
for help. The DEA and other law-enforcement agencies set up an undercover
task force.

By then Hazard was in the throes of a crime wave sparked by Oxy addicts
searching for a fix. James Wallace, a baby-faced 20-year-old, was locked in
the dilapidated Perry County Jail for receiving stolen property. Leaning on
a blue plastic picnic table in the jail's smoky visitors' lounge, Wallace
admits he stole televisions, guns, knives--all to earn money for Oxy.
Sometimes he'd even go into stores and claim the soda machine outside had
taken his dollar. "You'll do everything and anything," he says. In Hazard,
whatever he got his hands on could be traded for the drug. Addicts even
lifted grocery-store steaks. At one Hazard fruit stand, you could swap food
stamps for the pills.

Throughout the fall, Maggard's undercover task force quietly plugged away.
Police eventually seized 10,000 OxyContin pills and bought an additional
3,500 in sting operations. As they worked, Maggard and his team traced the
drug's route to Hazard. Most of the pills came through a disturbingly
convenient pipeline: the local pharmacy. Dealers would fake injuries or
visit a few unscrupulous doctors willing to write prescriptions for a $100
fee. Several doctors have already been charged, and Joseph Famularo, U.S.
attorney for the eastern district of Kentucky, hints his next round of
indictments may target health-care workers explicitly. Though Kentucky has
a computer system designed to track narcotics prescriptions, Hazard was
close enough to five other states that "doctor shoppers" could easily cross
borders. Many users paid cash for the pills. Others were bold enough to get
Medicaid or private insurance to pick up the tab. Police even found some
elderly patients who rationed their own pain pills and sold the rest.
"People were selling what they should be taking," says Maggard.

The task force got tips from an unlikely source: local churches. Late last
fall pastors found themselves conducting funeral services for a growing
number of Oxy overdose victims. One October evening the weekly Bible-study
session at Petrey Memorial Baptist Church became a virtual OxyContin
support group, as congregants spontaneously began sharing their stories
about the drug. The Rev. Ronnie (Butch) Pennington launched a faith-based
group, People Against Drugs. When he called a communitywide meeting on Oxy,
so many people responded that he had to move the location twice to find a
room large enough for the crowd. In the end, more than 400 people showed
up. After the meeting participants called in 60 tips about possible Oxy
dealers.

Police put them to use. As the sun rose on Feb. 6, more than 100 officers
fanned out across eastern Kentucky with a sheaf of arrest warrants. By
evening, Operation Oxyfest 2001 had rounded up 207 dealers. But a month
later people wondered if the arrests had even made a dent. Frustrated,
Kentucky prosecutor John Hansen has vowed to file murder charges against
Oxy-overdose survivors, including family, friends and dealers.

With the whole town focused on catching the dealers, Hazard's addicts have
largely been left to fend for themselves. The town still has no rehab
program. Joshua Coots bottomed out about a year and a half ago. He'd lost
his car, declared bankruptcy and wound up getting arrested for stealing the
family truck. One day he collapsed on his parents' kitchen floor. "Mom and
Dad, I'm on Oxy and it's killing me," he sobbed. At a religious revival
meeting, a visiting pastor preached about evil in people's lives. He seemed
to be looking straight at Coots, who wept steadily, tears dripping off his
mustache and down his chin. Was he ready to step into a new life? the
preacher asked. Coots was. He quit Oxy cold turkey. "It was miraculous," he
says.

Today, Main Street in Hazard has one fewer boarded-up storefront. In the
building that once housed a campaign office, Coots and his father, Pastor
Donnie Coots, refer Oxy addicts to private rehab programs out of state. In
Pillville, police are still rounding up dealers and users on weekends. The
hundreds of busts have managed to decrease the supply, making the drug more
expensive. Yet the Oxy market continues to thrive. Too many people in
Hazard, it seems, are willing to pay any price.