DRUG IDENTIFICATION STOPPED

Poison Control Center Could Not Handle Call Volume

Word of mouth spread the knowledge that the West Virginia Poison Center
hotline would identify unknown drugs over the phone, a service provided but
never advertised.

Now, the drug identification service has been discontinued because center
was getting overwhelmed with calls.

"Our suspicion was that a large percentage of them were due to drug
diversion," said Dr. Elizabeth Scharman, director of the Poison Center.
"You could hear drug deals in the background. It was getting overwhelming."

The drug identification service was intended for persons who might have
confusion about their drugs, such as someone who may have gotten their
medications mixed up in a bag, an elderly person with multiple caretakers,
or someone who began getting their medication through the mail and wanted
to confirm it was the same product, she said.

But, word of mouth spread that the drug identification was provided by the
center, and those seeking to identify drugs for non-medical uses abused the
service.

More than 50 percent of the drugs the poison specialists were being asked
to identify had been identified as potential drugs of abuse.

"We were getting a lot of identification questions for hydrocodone products
in particular," Scharman said.

The drug identification service shut down on April 1.

In the first quarter of 2002, over 86 percent of calls to the Poison Center
were to request drug identification. In 2001, 83 percent of calls to the
center were for drug identification, which is much higher than the 55
percent of calls for that purpose in 1995, Scharman said.

In addition to the growing percentage of calls, she said the number of
calls also was increasing. In 1996, the center received about 15,000 calls.
In 2001, the center received 26,000 calls and the numbers just kept going up.

The number of calls per month had been hovering around 2,100, Scharman
said, but at the end of 2001 things got out of control.

There were 2,500 calls to the center in January; 2,800 in February and
3,200 in March.

"We were getting to the point we couldn't do it with the staff that we
had," she said.

Since discontinuing the drug identification service, the number of calls
has dropped. In May there were only 1,581 calls, Scharman said.

"The majority of the drug identification calls that we were getting were
clustered in Boone, Cabell, Logan, Mingo, Wyoming and McDowell counties and
was starting to spread to Lincoln, Kanawha, Raleigh and Mercer counties,"
she said.

There was a major discrepancy with the calls per thousand persons in these
areas, Scharman said. That made her suspect that illicit drug activity
might be behind the high numbers of calls.