PLUG ANOTHER DRUG HOLE

Cut Online Connection, But Reducing Demand Is Key

A few years back, it seemed like the Internet would deliver high-end jobs
to the most remote hollows of Kentucky.

That hasn't materialized, but the Internet is now helping deliver something
else to remote rural areas: drugs.

Since law enforcement officials cracked down on Kentucky doctors
overprescribing painkillers, the business has moved to cyberspace. Delivery
trucks are criss-crossing Eastern Kentucky, delivering meds prescribed
after a brief, but expensive, long-distance telephone consultation with a
doctor.

Attorney General Greg Stumbo is supporting a bill in this General Assembly
session to address this latest source of prescription drug abuse. Under the
proposed legislation, Internet pharmacies would have to report
prescriptions to KASPER, the system that tracks prescription drugs in Kentucky.

The proposal also would require a person to show proof of a face-to-face
meeting with a doctor within six months before a drug can be delivered.

No one argues anymore about whether drug abuse is a broad and deep problem
in Kentucky. We all know it is. We congratulate Stumbo and the legislative
sponsors of this measure for trying to respond quickly and effectively to
this new avenue for supply.

Law enforcement will always be a critical part of any drug control effort,
but ultimately, the solution is more complex.

It's a simple economic fact that demand will create supply. If people want
pain killers and are willing to kill or steal for them, someone will step
up to sell them.

Sylvia Lovely, who has served as interim director of the state's Office of
Drug Control Policy, laid out the picture in an interview earlier this year
with the Herald-Leader.

"What we need to do," she said, "is also focus on treating them and, more
importantly, preventing the stuff from happening in the beginning."

But the solution goes beyond that, Lovely said. "We've got to be working on
economic opportunity for people and community life. You've got to find
people opportunity in these communities or they will turn to other things."