ILLEGAL USE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS IS KILLING RESIDENTS

MARBLE - If it were a race, cocaine and methamphetamines would have
been left behind by prescription medications as the biggest drug
problem in Cherokee County.

"What's killing our people in Cherokee County is prescription drugs,"
Sheriff Keith Lovin said Thursday evening at Marble Springs Baptist
Church during the second sheriff's town hall meeting.

More than 700 people in the state died from prescription drugs last
year, including nine in Cherokee County, Lovin told the small turnout.
"Four years ago we told the attorney general that prescription drugs
are our biggest problem," he said.

The biggest killer is methadone, Lovin said. The drug was created to
wean people off heroin in the 1960s but is now an inexpensive drug
used for pain management. However, methadone has a long half life,
meaning the effect goes away while the drug remains in the system.
Methadone has a poor interaction with Xanax and other substances.

"If someone is taking [methadone] properly, it is a good pain
reliever," he said. "It is usually not the drug's fault, the doctor's
fault or the pharmacy's fault. If a person is going to six different
drugstores [getting the same drug], there are issues."

Many strong prescription drugs are used by people who are old or
terminally ill, Lovin said. They die and the unused drugs remain in
the house, available for relatives or others to obtain. Also, many
people don't get rid of their unused prescription drugs and leave them
around the house, available for possible misuse by someone else.

As a result, there will be a pill turn-in day on Saturday, April 18,
in the Ingles parking lots in Murphy and Andrews from 10 a.m. to 2
p.m. The sheriff's office will take the unused pills and destroy them.
The 15 sheriff's offices in western North Carolina are working
together on the program.

Marble Springs Baptist Pastor Jeff Maynard said prescription narcotics
are not hard to get. He asked if the sheriff's office has a method to
control doctor shopping. Lovin said a prescription directory came
on-line in July. The sheriff's office has been working to get
pharmacies in the area involved with that program.

The effort is more difficult here because Cherokee County touches two
other states and several counties, Lovin said.

Medicaid purchased $6.4 million worth of prescription drugs for people
last year for 5,300 clients, Lovin said. Social Services personnel
will tell you that half of that is fraud.

"I think we are seeing a push to solve that," he said.

Winfield Clonts, senior services director for Cherokee County, told of
a Safe Seniors program that is endeavoring to collect pertinent
information about seniors, such as medical, allergy and prescription
facts and relative contacts and place it all together in bags and on a
magnet. It would be handy for the elderly person to get to the
information in an emergency and it would make the job of emergency
workers easier by having available information quickly.

Also, medical information is being collected from seniors for county
dispatch so that it will be immediately available in case of
emergency. The information would have to be continually updated,
Clonts said.

Lovin said the elderly persons in the system would be contacted
periodically to update information.

Lovin said part of the reason for the town hall meetings is to
institute Neighborhood Watch programs.

"We'd like to get back to the point where neighbors look out for each
other," Lovin said.

A training program for Neighborhood Watch will be held Tuesday, April
28, at the sheriff's office. For information call 837-2589.

The next sheriff's town hall meeting is at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at
Mission Farm in Peachtree.