DATA LACKING ON DRUG USE BY MINERS

Officials For 3 States Hold Summit To Keep Mines Drug- And Alcohol-Free

HAZARD - There are no statistics yet to show, or even estimate, how many
coal miners in Eastern Kentucky have been injured or killed while high on
drugs.

When mining officials from three states met yesterday for an ambitious
summit titled, "Keeping America's Mines Drug-and-Alcohol Free,"only one
West Virginia miner showed up to talk about overcoming his addiction to the
pain killer OxyContin.

"When you're on it, you don't really think you're impaired," Danny Osborne
Jr. told about 130 people at Hazard Community and Technical College. "You
go to work to make money so you can buy more."

While no agencies in Kentucky, Virginia or West Virginia document
drug-related mining injuries and deaths, Kentucky's top mining official,
Paris L. Charles of Pikeville, said anecdotal evidence suggests drug abuse
inside coal mines has become a serious problem.

One of the anecdotes involved Charles, a former mine safety official who in
July became executive director of the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and
Licensing.

"As (the drug problem) grows in our community, mining is a part of that
community," said Charles, who said his Pikeville home was burglarized twice
in 2002.

"They took small hand tools, power tools, a lawn mower, and leaf blower,"
Charles said, "things that police told me would be easy to sell for drugs."

Connie McGuire of Prestonsburg, who owns a large drug-testing company with
offices in Kentucky and Ohio, had more scientific data.

McGuire said in an interview that details are confidential, but about a
third of the miners she tested after accidents in Eastern Kentucky over a
five-year period had been using drugs.

At one Eastern Kentucky mine last year, she said, nearly 50 percent of the
200 workers tested positive for pain pills.

Many miners also tested positive for Xanax, a tranquilizer that McGuire
said acts on the system like alcohol.

During discussion groups on the issue, speakers pointed out that mining
drug problems are much worse in Eastern Kentucky than Western Kentucky.
Some called for peer pressure from miners endangered by drugged co-workers.

Drug abuse in small mines, where owners do not conduct drug screens, is
three times worse than in large mining operations, a federal official said.

"We do testing," said Ottis Mullins of London, a safety official for
Progress Fuels. "And if we get rid of three or four employees, they go down
the road where they don't do testing and they're working the next day."

Federal mining official Bob Hartman called for programs to reward coal
companies with good screening programs.

"I've never had a positive test after an accident," Mullins said. "If every
coal mine in Eastern Kentucky had an effective drug program, we wouldn't be
sitting here right now."