Statewide Drug Sweep Targets 150

PRESCRIPTION-OFFENDER ROUNDUP IS FOCUS OF 'OPERATION RX' EFFORT

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. -- The long arm of the law reached into trailer parks,
apartments and houses across the state yesterday as Kentucky State Police
began arresting 150 suspects on drug-related charges.

Code-named ''Operation Rx,'' the six-month investigation leading to
yesterday's arrests focused on the illegal sale of prescription drugs --
such as OxyContin, Xanax and Lortab -- which have flooded Eastern Kentucky,
according to Lt. Kevin Payne, a state police spokesman.

Arrests in Western Kentucky tended to be related to use of illegal drugs,
such as methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana, he said.

''When you're talking about the drug problem in Kentucky, it's really a
regional problem,'' Payne said. ''In Western Kentucky, you've got the
problem with methamphetamine. Eastern Kentucky is having a problem with
OxyContin.''

The charges range from possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor, to
trafficking in controlled substances, a class C felony, punishable by up to
10 years in prison.

Yesterday's roundup was part of a continuing effort by state police,
following the multiagency Oxyfest last year, to crack down on
prescription-drug abuse. The agency also has reorganized recently to create
a Drug Control Branch to help combat illegal drug use, said state police
Commissioner Ishmon F. Burks.

No doctors, pharmacists or drugstores were cited in the arrests yesterday,
Payne said.

Beginning at 7 a.m., officers fanned out across all 16 state police post
regions, knocking on doors and peeking through shuttered windows, sometimes
rousing suspects from their sleep.

One Radcliff man, handcuffed outside his trailer, pleaded with officers not
to arrest him on charges of trafficking in methamphetamine and trafficking
in a simulated substance. The second charge resulted from his alleged
selling to an informant a substance that was supposed to be meth but wasn't.

''Please, don't!'' cried the suspect, Larry Howard, 31. ''I don't mess with
crank. I swear to God on my life!''

Howard's wife, who arrived on the scene shortly afterward and declined to
talk to a reporter, also pleaded with police, but to no avail. Officers
then drove Howard back to the state police post in Elizabethtown to be
fingerprinted.

Trooper Steve Pavey, spokesman for that post, said most drug-roundup
arrests go smoothly, as they did yesterday. ''Usually, there's very little
trouble,'' he said. ''But you're going to homes with known drug dealers and
weapons.''