COCAINE DEATHS SPUR CALL FOR HELP

With the latest state figures showing Palm Beach County leading the
state in cocaine-related deaths, local politicians, law enforcement
officials and drug abuse prevention workers are pushing harder than
ever to draw attention to the unrelenting problem and get help from
state and federal agencies.

The response has been slow, but local and state leaders are finally
talking about cocaine again, said Doris Carroll, who heads the Palm
Beach County Substance Abuse Coalition.

"We're not sweeping it under the rug as much as we used to," Carroll
said of the cocaine problem. "Now, we're getting ready to vacuum."

The renewed interest in cocaine's influence on Palm Beach County
follows a series of Palm Beach Post stories in May that examined
cocaine's deadly effects locally and across the state and the
subsequent release of a state report showing that Palm Beach County
reported the most cocaine-related deaths in Florida in 2005.

The number of people in the county who died with cocaine in their
system last year was so high that deaths linked to the drug almost
outnumbered traffic deaths. The county medical examiner's office
counted 197 cocaine-related deaths last year; the Florida Highway
Patrol recorded 200 traffic deaths. Despite the grim statistics,
local law enforcement agencies are struggling to get money from a
federally funded regional task force that oversees $12.8 million for
major drug investigations. The task force, called HIDTA, for "high
intensity drug trafficking area," receives money from the Office of
National Drug Control Policy. The county has yet to receive a dime
from the task force, even though the amount the group gets is based
partly on illegal drug activity reports from Palm Beach County.

Task force leaders have said that they thought they would receive
more money when Palm Beach County joined, but that they have not.
Still, local law enforcement agencies want their share and are
threatening to pull out of the program.

"We don't want that to happen," said U. S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fort
Pierce, one of the politicians who urged county officials to join the
task force, promising $2 million to $3 million in extra money for
drug investigations. Foley whose district includes parts of northern
Palm Beach County, said he is discussing the issue with task force
officials and is trying to convince them to give money to Palm Beach
County, using county statistics and the Post stories as evidence of
the county's major drug problem.

The state's new drug czar, Bill Janes, said he hopes to travel to
Palm Beach County soon to learn more about the area's struggles with
cocaine and prescription drugs. He has spent his first four months on
the job travelling to other parts of the state.

"Your statistics are a concern to me," Janes said, referring to The
Post's reporting.

The county drug coalition, which falls under the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, plans to arrange a community forum about cocaine
in the coming months to encourage discussion about the drug, which is
claiming lives mostly in the 35-and-older age group.

"These are people who are parents," Carroll said, pointing out that
many people assume that it's mostly young people who are dying after
using cocaine.

Instead, the statistics show that people who were part of the
generation that experienced crack and powder cocaine's surge in
popularity in the 1980s are the ones who are dying today after years
of chronic cocaine use.

"It's the Baby Boomers and the Generation Xers that we are still
seeing using the drug," said Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Capt.
Karl Durr, who oversees narcotics investigations.

The sheriff's office is adding three narcotics detectives to its
organized crime bureau, one of whom will focus on prescription drug
fraud, Durr said. He added that the latest drug-related death
statistics reflect the extent of the drug market in the county.

Cocaine is the most prevalent and deadliest drug in the county and
state, with nearly 3,000 overdoses involving the drug reported
statewide from 2000 to 2005. There were 1,943 cocaine-related deaths
in Florida in 2005, and 732 of them were overdoses.

Also, prescription drug-related overdoses appear to be on the rise
statewide and locally. FDLE statistics show that oxycodone
(OxyContin), methadone and morphine were detected in overdoses more
often in Palm Beach County than anywhere else in the state. Because
many overdoses involved more than one drug, it's unclear from state
statistics exactly how many people died in the county or statewide of
prescription drug overdoses.

These local and state drug issues were the focus in Tallahassee June
7 when Gov. Jeb Bush hosted the state's annual daylong drug summit,
an invitation-only event for law enforcement officials and experts in
the drug treatment and prevention fields.

After the summit, Bush called prescription drug abuse a greater
problem than cocaine abuse because pain killers and other addictive
prescription drugs are becoming easier to get, legally and illegally.
But, Bush said, "You can't let up on cocaine use.... You have to hit
it on all fronts," he said of the state's drug problems.