PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE A KILLER IN EASTERN KENTUCKY TOWN

There were so many painkillers -- 180 -- that a pharmacist had to divide
the tablets between two bottles.

On Sept. 27, 2001, Bailey's wife found him dead of a drug overdose in their
trailer in Grayson. He was 35.

Federal and state law enforcement officers allege that Bailey was one of
thousands of drug abusers whose addictions were fed by five doctors who
practiced at various times since 1996 in a clinic in tiny South Shore that
is owned by Dr. David Procter.

Bailey's doctor, Rodolfo Santos; Procter; and the three other doctors have
been indicted on state or federal charges that they illegally prescribed
prescription drugs at Procter's clinic and at offices that three of the
doctors opened in the area.

South Shore is an Ohio River town in eastern Kentucky with 1,200 residents,
two sets of stoplights and three drugstores. Law enforcement officials
allege that because of an easy supply of drugs and the town's proximity to
other states, patients came to Procter's clinic from more than 100 miles
away -- from Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and as far as Michigan.

At least nine of them died of overdoses in the last several years,
according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Greenup
County coroner.

"Those pills, it's like they just took over his life," Bailey's wife,
Fiona, told The Courier-Journal as tears welled in her blue eyes. "And
these doctors, as long as he had the money ... they'd give him whatever
he'd want."

Prescription drug abuse is a nationwide problem, but in eastern Kentucky,
the excessive use of painkillers and tranquilizers -- widely called "nerve
pills" -- is fostered by the region's poverty, joblessness and despair.

Some abusers start using drugs for legitimate pain, while others favor
prescription drugs over illicit drugs because they don't need to buy them
in street deals or burglarize drugstores, said Tony King, resident agent in
charge of the DEA office in Louisville.

Instead, they become "doctor shoppers" -- addicts who visit several doctors
and pharmacists to get multiple prescriptions.

Procter's South Shore practice, and other clinics it spun off in Garrison
and Paintsville, were allegedly the major suppliers in northeastern
Kentucky, according to Cliff Duvall, commonwealth's attorney for Greenup
and Lewis counties.

"Why steal it. Just go in and get it from the doctor," Duvall said.

One of the doctors who worked for Procter, Steven Snyder, has pleaded
guilty and surrendered his medical license. He is cooperating with federal
prosecutors and told the DEA after his arrest that at Procter's direction,
he wrote prescriptions for controlled substances 10 to 12 hours a day,
according to records of the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure.

Procter, 51, and the other three doctors indicted during the past two years
- -- Drs. Santos, Frederick Cohn and Fortune Williams -- have pleaded
innocent and are awaiting trial.

Procter arranged for other doctors to work in his clinic after a car
accident in November 1998 that impaired his memory, according to court
records. He testified last year in a lawsuit he filed over the accident
that he had contracts with multiple companies to supply temporary doctors.

Procter's lawyer, Tracy Hoover, said his client was "incapacitated and
mostly at home" after the accident, although he acknowledged that Procter
still went to the clinic.

He said Procter did not act as office manager, did not hire and had no
control over the temporary doctors.

"He did not tell them to do it this way," Hoover said. "He did not allow
them to do it this way."

South Shore's location, across the river from Ohio and just downriver from
West Virginia, made it an ideal place for addicts seeking to visit doctors
and pharmacies in different states to avoid detection.

Belinda Rose was a billing clerk for Procter from 1995 to 1997, when the
clinic was on U.S. 23, about a mile east of its current location.

"You'd pull in the office, and the lot would be full, and down the alley
you would turn in, there would be cars all down the road," she said. The
DEA led an investigation of the clinic and was assisted by the federally
funded FIVCO Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, an agency based in Ashland
that investigates drug cases in five counties.

"Law enforcement agents and officers determined that thousands of
pharmaceutical drug addicts in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio were
being provided controlled substances through the activities of Procter" and
two of his office managers, Robert Jessie, the FIVCO task force project
director, said in a statement July 15, the day Procter and the office
managers were indicted.

Law enforcement officials say hydrocodone, sold under brand names such as
Lorcet, Lortab or Vicodin, is the most commonly abused prescription drug in
Kentucky. The state has ranked third nationally in per capita use of the
painkiller for the last 10 years, according to Mark Caverly, diversion
group supervisor in the DEA's Louisville office. Consumption of the drug
per person in Kentucky is almost twice the national average.

In 2000, nine of the state's top 10 counties for per capita hydrocodone use
were in eastern Kentucky -- Greenup County ranked second.