FLETCHER, BESHEAR VOW TO CONTINUE WAR ON DRUGS

FRANKFORT - Sheriff Marvin Lipfird and his deputies rounded up 20 more
drug dealers last week in Harlan County and confiscated another load
of prescription painkillers destined for Eastern Kentucky's black market.

The drug problem, Lipfird said, just doesn't seem to be going away,
despite the best efforts of local, state and federal
authorities.

"We need more personnel," said Lipfird, who has seven deputies helping
him patrol an expansive mountain county that has been ravaged by
illegal drugs and by increases in other crimes addicts commit to get
money to feed their habits.

"There's not one family in this county that has not been affected by
the drug problem, whether directly or indirectly," Lipfird said.

Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his Democratic challenger, Steve
Beshear, say they have strategies to help Kentucky communities hit
hard by illegal drugs. Both are promising to continue the war on drugs
if they win the Nov. 6 election.

Lipfird and other sheriffs in rural counties hope that translates into
more money to hire deputies for the front lines.

Lawrence County Sheriff Garrett Roberts, a member of the Kentucky
Sheriff's Association board of directors, said increases in drug
crimes have led to a more pressing need for additional deputies across
the state.

"The prescription drug problem is huge," Roberts said.

Fletcher took office nearly four years ago at a time when the state
still was trying to get a grip on a drug problem so severe that some
officials were calling it "a scourge." Prescription painkillers had
become the drug of choice in the mountainous eastern half of the
state. Homemade methamphetamine had taken hold in the western half.

The governor set up a state agency specifically to tackle the problem,
ramped up a prescription drug tracking system, funded 10 treatment
centers for addicts, and pushed legislation through the General
Assembly to limit the availability of the ingredients needed to make
methamphetamine.

"We have cleaned up drugs in Kentucky," Fletcher said in response to a
questionnaire from the Associated Press.

Beshear said drug abuse remains "a severe problem" across the
state.

"It is time state and local government, law enforcement officials,
treatment professionals, and educators join together in a
comprehensive attack on this epidemic," he said.

Beshear said he wants to expand drug treatment, detoxification and
education.

"The money taxpayers save in reduced crime and decreased law
enforcement costs would more than pay for the costs of these
programs," he said. "As governor, I would work to expand programs into
every county in the state that will emphasize law enforcement,
treatment and education."

Sheriffs say beefed up efforts by federal and state law enforcement
agencies have helped to put hundreds of drug dealers behind bars, but
new dealers quickly take their places.

Martin County Sheriff Garmon Preece said 80 percent of the arrests
made by him and his four deputies are drug-related. And although they
turn up drugs like marijuana and methamphetamine, the biggest problem
remains prescription pills, including the painkiller OxyContin.

The drug, dubbed "hillbilly heroin" in drug-ridden Appalachian
communities, has been blamed for hundreds of deaths across the country
in recent years. Addicts crush the pill into a powder and snort it.

In 2006, 484 people died from drug overdoses in Kentucky, according to
the state medical examiner's annual report. Hillbilly heroin was the
chief cause in 16 percent of the deaths.

Despite the best efforts of law enforcement, Preece said the drug
remains prevalent in the mountains, and so do the dealers.

Preece said law enforcement can't do much more without increasing
manpower.

"We're doing our best with what we've got," he said.