VIVID TALES FROM E. KENTUCKY PROMPT CALL FOR LEGISLATION

PAINTSVILLE - Six hours of horror stories and chilling statistics on
Kentucky's drug problems moved Gov. Paul Patton yesterday to call for new
steps to stop prescription-drug abuse -- including targeting physicians for
tougher enforcement.

Patton told state Justice Secretary Ishmon Burks to develop a legislative
proposal for the General Assembly next year aimed at toughening Kentucky's
prescription drug laws.

"We need to put the real criminals who are grossly profiting from these
drugs ... under the jail," Patton said. "Some of them have got to be
physicians."

Patton's recommendation came after a daylong meeting in Paintsville of the
Kentucky Appalachian Commission, which focused on the region's drug problems.

Patton stressed that the problems are not exclusive to the mountains, but
most speakers yesterday focused on the region.

"I'm not sure there's a greater problem in Eastern Kentucky than the abuse
of prescription drugs," said Mike Duncan, director of special
investigations for the attorney general's office.

Drug arrests have at least doubled in Kentucky since 1995, officials said,
and the state leads the nation in the number of pharmacies robbed for drugs.

The governor's panel heard the Rev. Donnie Coots, a Perry County minister,
describe the death last summer of his 22-year-old son from a drug overdose.
Harlan County Sheriff Steve Duff reported a line of patients, two blocks
long, waiting to see a local doctor who gave a pain-pill prescription to a
uniformed deputy without examining him.

Duff said his deputies found families that sold all their furniture to buy
drugs. The only meals their children ate were at school, he said.

"It's like a plague that's come in on us," Duff said, "and it's eating our
people alive."

Other speakers urged prolonged treatment for addicts and others suggested
law-enforcement efforts should focus on drug traffickers, not users who
sometimes are jailed on charges of possessing a controlled substance.

Patton said he was not certain what should be done to addicts who steal in
order to obtain money for drugs.

Trafficking is equally difficult to control, said Tim Hazlette, state
police deputy commissioner. "We've found that for every person you arrest,
there are three waiting to take their place because it's so lucrative."

Duncan, the attorney general's investigator, praised KASPER, a statewide
computer network that allows law-enforcement officials to track drug
prescriptions in Kentucky, but he said it has not stopped the flow of pills
to drug dealers.

"The bottom line is we've got some bad docs," Duncan said. He cited the
case of an unnamed physician who wrote prescriptions to 100 patients a day,
spending about 2 or 3 minutes with each without giving them a physical exam.

Burks said the state's DARE program is a good first step toward alerting
students to the dangers of drugs -- though some studies have indicated it
has no effect on reducing a teen's likelihood of abusing drugs.

Two senior class officers at Paintsville High School said students tune out
drug-awareness programs by the time they reach high school. They
recommended directing the programs at 5th and 6th graders.