COCAINE: EPICEMIC HAS MOVE FROM STATE'S URBAN TO RURAL AREAS

OKEECHOBEE -- On the edge of town lies a neighborhood where people can
park on the side of the road and, within seconds, be greeted with a
tap on the car window from a dealer ready to dole out powder cocaine
or crack cocaine.

It's just one of the places in the rural county north of Lake
Okeechobee where people can buy the drug, something that wasn't so
easy to do in the 1980s or even five years ago. Find interactive maps
graphics on cocaine's effect on South Florida, hear a story of one
family ripped apart by the drug.

Investigators believe it's mostly because local gangs with ties to
drug runners in Mexico are growing.

"There's definitely more cocaine here," said Okeechobee Sheriff's Sgt.
Jimmy Mills, who has lived in the county for 36 years. "You identify
the problem, but over time it just gets worse."

The trend is playing out in rural areas statewide, where a record
number of people are dying with cocaine in their systems.

The Palm Beach Post analyzed the number of cocaine-related deaths
reported by state medical examiners from 1986 to 2004 and found that
most of the counties and regions with the highest rates are rural.

It's a dramatic reversal from two decades ago, when cocaine was widely
viewed as a "big-city problem" and Miami-Dade County had the highest
rate of cocaine-related deaths by far.

Miami-Dade's rate peaked in 1988 at 18.5 deaths per 100,000 people.
Today, it has one of the lowest in the state.

Okeechobee County's rate stands at 18.4, based on 2004 statistics, the
latest figures available from the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement.

Still, many law-enforcement officials across the state were unaware
that cocaine-related deaths were rising in their area.

One rural area that includes Lee, Glades and Hendry counties recorded
14.8 deaths per 100,000 people in 2004, nearly three times the rate of
the late 1980s.

"We have, like every other county, a crack problem," said Glades
County Sheriff's Capt. Daryl Lewis.

But the agency's priority has shifted to methamphetamine, which is not
as widespread but is becoming more prevalent, he said.

In a rural North Florida pocket that includes Hamilton County, the
rate is 14.2. But the sheriff there said the numbers don't make sense.

"I don't think we've had a tremendous level of cocaine use," said
Hamilton County Sheriff Reid J. Harrell. "We have some street sales,
but by and large it's like everywhere else