PILLS SWALLOWING THE MOUNTAINS

Don't Surrender E. Ky. To Another Drug Epidemic

For years, there has been anecdotal evidence that Eastern Kentucky was
hooked on prescription drugs. Now, we know just how serious the region's
addiction is.

It's the worst in the nation.

That was the finding of a Herald-Leader analysis of U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration records relating to shipments of prescription painkillers,
such as OxyContin, Lorcet, Lortab and Vicodin.

These prescription narcotics are shipped to three Eastern Kentucky ZIP code
prefix areas (the ones that cover Johnson, Martin and much of Lawrence
counties) at a higher volume per capita than any other locality in the
nation. A handful of other Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia zip code
prefix areas are not too far behind.

Far too many of these pills wind up being sold on the street at $6 to $10 a
pill for Lorcet, Lortab and Vicodin and up to $80 a pop for OxyContin.

This illicit trade fueled a 348 percent increase in Eastern Kentucky court
cases involving possession and trafficking in controlled substances from
1997 to 2001.

A team of Herald-Leader reporters investigating Eastern Kentucky's drug
problem also found that the number of people seeking treatment for
addiction to painkillers nearly tripled in the region from 1998 to 2001.

The demand is so great and the waiting lists are so long that just getting
admitted to a treatment center can take several months.

Further evidence of the magnitude of the problem is the fact that in some
Eastern Kentucky counties, a DUI stop more often involves driving under the
influence of drugs than driving under the influence of alcohol.

Judges are dismissing some of these drug DUI cases because they aren't
prosecuted in a timely fashion. The reason? An understaffed Kentucky State
Police crime lab has a nine-month backlog of drug tests to be analyzed.

(Are you paying attention, Kentucky lawmakers? Add this example of justice
delayed meaning no justice at all to the list of consequences this state
will suffer if its revenue problems aren't addressed.)

Some might argue that Eastern Kentucky consumes more pain pills because the
region suffers more pain -- the pain from the beating a body takes working
long years in a coal mine, the pain that accompanies the serious illnesses
that afflict an aging population, even the pain of being poor and jobless.

But such excuses are just that -- rationalizations intended to mask the
true enormity of the problem and to blunt criticism of this state's
shameful failure to address Eastern Kentucky's addiction to prescription drugs.

We've heard these excuses and rationalizations before when anecdotal
evidence of Eastern Kentucky's habit hit the news, such as a decade ago
when an Inez woman confessed to giving her two young children some of her
"nerve pills" in an attempt to kill them to solve some marital problems and
collect on their insurance policies.

Outrage over that incident and over stories of Eastern Kentuckians whose
"nerve pill" habit was so strong that they kept them in bowls in various
parts of their home -- always handy to be popped in one's mouth the way a
child might eat an M&M -- prompted calls for responsible officials to
address the problem.

But the outcry soon died down, and we collectively forgot about it.

Well, we can't turn our back any longer, not now that we know that one area
of our state has the worst drug habit in the country. That's a No. 1
ranking we don't need.

State and local health and law-enforcement agencies, the professional
boards that discipline doctors and pharmacists, even the DEA that keeps
approving greater and greater production of the very narcotics it's trying
to keep off the streets, all must make a strong, concerted effort to help
Eastern Kentucky kick its habit.

If we had acted 10 years ago to stop the illicit trade in prescription
medications, we might have saved a generation from the addiction they
suffer now.

If we don't act today, we can expect many more generations of addicts in
the future.