DRUG OF CHOICE OXYCONTIN, AND WITH IT, HOPE DIES

According to Boyle

From the state known across the nation for L.L. Bean, lobsters and people
who say "ayuh" comes yet another claim to fame: the Oxy baby.

An Oxy baby is a child born to a mother hooked on OxyContin, the highly
addictive painkiller that passes for a good time in rural Maine.

You probably know that our state, with Yankee ingenuity, was the innovator
in this area. While people in other parts of the country were scrounging
around for heroin, rural Mainers figured out that a $3 Medicaid
prescription can lead to just as much fun.

Fake a bad back, get a doctor to write you up, crush an Oxy and, voila, no
more problems.

Of course, the problems come back. And when they do, they've multiplied.
You're knocking over pharmacies, breaking into houses, stealing your
grandmother's savings - and having babies who are very sick.

This is a new phenomenon, and I can report that once again Maine is on the
cutting edge. It's so new that Newsweek magazine just did a story on it,
detailing the dangers posed to the unborn baby and newborn infant.

Oxy mothers are prone to miscarriage. Their babies are born early and
small, which can lead to all sorts of lifelong problems, and start their
lives by going through withdrawal. Some are given methadone, if doctors
know what the problem is, but most of the little kids go cold turkey.

Needless to say, they cry a lot. How would you like to have to quit drugs
when you were a few hours old?

And the problem isn't limited to OxyContin.

At MaineGeneral Medical Center, they haven't had their first Oxy baby yet,
but they have had newborns with addictions to heroin, cocaine and methadone.

And these drug-addicted babies are putting Maine on the media map.

When Newsweek decided to do a story, whom did the reporter call? Docs at
Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where there's always at least one
Oxy baby in the nursery. A nurse midwife in Calais, who said a quarter of
the babies she delivered last year were addicted. An Oxy mom there who gave
her mother the baby to raise.

They're watching the child carefully for developmental delays.

I feel much better.

But Maine is getting national press, as it has since the OxyContin problem
surfaced here a couple of years ago. Kentucky and West Virginia followed
right on our heels - they chipped in with the term "hillbilly heroin" - but
Maine has stayed out front, with Oxy-related robberies, burglaries and
assaults from Wells to Washington County.

When the television news show "48 Hours" did a story on an OxyContin
treatment center in California, where was the patient from? Maine. When the
Christian Science Monitor did a story, whom did the reporter call? Jay
McCloskey, who was our very own U.S. attorney.

When Newsweek followed up on the latest wrinkle in the Oxy story, it went
directly to the Pine Tree state.

So while Angus S. King Jr. is running up frequent-flyer miles selling
Maine's attributes -quality of life, good workers -to business and industry
from away, readers all over the country and the world are getting a
different picture.

They may not know Calais from Casco Bay, but they do remember that Maine is
lumped in there with Appalachia in stories about people who have so little
to look forward to in their lives that they'd rather spend their days in a
drug-induced haze.

You can't buy that kind of press.

And unfortunately, it's true.

The fact is that much of Maine is like Appalachia. It is poor, rural,
isolated and insulated. Too many young people grow up never looking beyond
the next gravel-pit party. They don't get the message that hard work in
school will take them to better places or improve the places they're from.
They see the future as one dreary dead-end, and when someone comes along
with a pill that will make everything seem better, even for a few hours,
they take it and crave more.

What do they have to lose?

Not much, if they've lost hope already. That's what we should be peddling -
to kids and young parents, in schools and courts, churches and the DHS.
Shout it from the rooftops - that good things come from perseverance and
patience.

It takes guts to stay the course - stay in school, adult ed. And sometimes
I think that's what we're losing a bit of. Prosperity is dangled in front
of us on television. Our celebrities all seem to have made it overnight.
Our very own state government peddles lottery tickets like they are free
passes to heaven, sending the message that all it takes to make it big is a
little luck.

What a swindle.

But I digress, or maybe not. I think this lottery stuff is part of a bigger
message that tells people that their lives are nothing compared to the
stuff they see on TV. If only you had a few million dollars.

The fact is that most of us can find contentment right here if we work a
little harder and look for the right things. If we don't take the easy way
out - and let babies pay the price.

Spring has been heroin season in idyllic little Farmington. Crack cocaine
was seized last week in downtown Waterville. That followed a picture in the
newspaper of an OxyContin armed robber being led away to jail in Augusta.

At least he can't have a baby.

They're just up the road in Bangor, newborn junkies crying their little
lungs out. Maine, the way life should be.

We've got to be able to live better than this.