DETECTIVES SEEING DEALERS OF ALL TYPES

No longer are the addicts looking to treatment facilities for help --
some are foregoing the organized route and, instead, get it on the
street. Still others are looking for what they think -- mistakenly --
is a quick high.

And it's not just the seedy looking drug dealer who's selling
methadone and other prescription drugs.

Increasingly, the dealer might be a grandmother trying to supplement
her income, according to Salisbury Police Detectives Danny Dyles and
Rodney Mahaley said.

"Methadone is just as much in the country club as anywhere else," Mahaley said.

Rowan County has seen several drug arrests involving methadone.

Most recently, Kimberly Shoaf Peeler, a 47-year-old Granite Quarry
woman, reportedly sold methadone to an undercover Salisbury Police officer.

According to the charges filed in 2006, Peeler sold an undercover
officer 20 methadone pills on Aug. 28 and 20 more the next day. On
Sept. 19, she again sold more pills to an undercover officer and had
236 methadone pills on her, police say. The charges are pending.

The Rowan County Sheriff's Office charged a Rockwell man in December
2005 with trafficking in opium and forging prescriptions.

Michael Ray Newton, 39, obtained the controlled substances Xanax and
methadone from legitimate prescriptions that were copied and altered.
He went to area pharmacies, including Eckerds, Kmart, Crescent
Pharmacy and Medicine Shoppe, with prescriptions written for his
mother and brother. A few weeks later, Newton died in the Rowan
County jail, officials believe of a heart attack.

Detective Mahaley says the number of prescription drug cases has
increased in recent years and continue to keep law enforcement officers busy.

"We can have two officers working prescription cases and not have a
break," he said.

The street is marketing methadone because it's still easy to get.
Mahaley explained that someone covered by insurance with a decent
co-pay could get a bottle of 60 pills and sell each one on the street.

"The profits are easier with a prescription bottle a person could
sell one pill for $6 or more," he said.

Drug investigators have worked with doctors to educate them about the
increasing abuse and forgery of prescriptions, Dyles, the other
Salisbury detective, said.

"There are about 60 percent of doctors who do care, and they try," he said.

The doctors who try, Dyles explained, are the ones who take the time
to refine their prescriptions, making them harder to forge.

If investigators have identified a person selling their methadone or
forging a prescription, they can notify the doctor. Because of
federal sweeping federal privacy rules, often referred to as HIPAA,
the doctors can't provide medical information to law enforcement
about patients who might be abusing their trust. But they can take
actions within their own office.

Some doctors, the investigators have discovered, are going beyond the
required regulations and setting up screenings before they write prescriptions.

Not all addicts take methadone hoping to get a high -- which the drug
does not provide.

"Some people take it to get a low," Detective Mahaley said.

Methadone is a derivative of opium, and a person can face very
serious charges for dealing in relatively small amounts.

A person arrested with more than 4 grams of methadone can be charged
with trafficking in opium. A person would have to have 28 or more
grams of cocaine to face a trafficking charge for that better known drug.

If convicted of trafficking in methadone or any other opiate, jail
time ranges from six to 23 years.

Fooling The User

Sheriff George Wilhelm and Capt. Kevin Auten say their experience
shows that methadone's victims are more likely young adults.

The mentality of teens and younger adults is methadone and other
opiates must be OK since they are prescribed.

To them, "it's not an illegal drug," Wilhelm said last week.

And, indeed, it is not illegal to possess methadone with a
prescription, but it is illegal to to sell the drug and it can be
fatal to take methadone if you're not following a doctor's instructions.

Investigators are seeing less cocaine and heroin overdose deaths and
more caused by methadone or other prescription medications.

Three years ago, the Sheriff's Office received $7,500 in grant funds
from Purdue Pharma Technologies, a private Connecticut pharmaceutical
company, to investigate prescription abuse and combat drugs from
being sold on the streets.

The increase of prescription medicine overdoses has affected the way
officers investigate cases. When responding to deaths, whenever
possible, sheriff's investigators send any medications found in the
home to the Medical Examiner's Office along with the body.

It helps eliminate or narrow the search for drugs in the person's
system, Wilhelm said.

Not only are investigators seeing people sell the drug obtained
through a prescription -- legitimate or forged -- they also say some
addicts enrolled in clinically supervised treatment programs are
abusing the process.

Wilhelm and Auten explained people are going through the treatment
program to earn privileges or have a prescription written to take the
drug home.

Auten said in his 14 years in law enforcement, most of those in drug
investigations, he's not come across addicts who benefitted from
treatment facilities.

"I've never had them tell me they've been clean," he said.

Sheriff Wilhelm doesn't discredit treatment clinics who've shown
large success rates. He acknowledges that people his investigators
meet on the street are typically people who haven't followed the
prescribed treatment.

"The medication is good when it's used as prescribed," he said.

Like alcohol or any addiction, Wilhelm said, they may not be able to
stop at one.

Pharmacists Helping

Many pharmacists and doctors are working with law enforcement to
decrease abuse of prescription drugs like methadone.

There are state and federal mandates that pharmacists must follow and
an increasing number of new regulations to come.

Joe Hager, pharmacy director at Salisbury Pharmacy on West Innes
Street, explained that methadone, along with other schedule II
controlled substances, must be kept separate from the other
inventory. A schedule II controlled substance is any that has the
potential for tolerance and abuse.

Pharmacists also double count methadone as well as any other drug
before it goes into a bottle and then into a customer's hands.

Hager said Virginia, the nearest state to the north, already has a
monitoring system in place and twice a month, the pharmacy must
report to that state who received medications, what it was received
for and when.

North Carolina is among the more than 30 states who participate in
prescription monitoring programs where information about the
medications prescribed and dispensed are distributed to medical
practitioners, pharmacies, as well as law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

This program is designed to deter and identify many types of illegal
activity that include prescription forgery and "doctor shopping."

Sometimes alerts will be given from insurance companies to show that
a patient has received duplicate therapy. Other than relying on
insurance companies and that gut feeling that something just isn't
right about a prescription, there aren't many safeguards in place.

"We have no idea if they've gone to see other doctors," Hager said.

However, there are plans to advance that monitoring program at the
state and federal level.

The North Carolina General Assembly is looking to require health care
providers, authorized to write prescriptions for certain controlled
substances, use a state-provided secure prescription pad. The program
would also require pharmacists to fill only those prescriptions
written on state-provided secure prescription pads.

Purdue Pharma, a private pharmaceutical company, has developed and
funded an information clearinghouse in an ongoing effort to combat
the abuse and prevent those who sell the drugs from their legitimate
prescriptions.

The initiative, called RxPATROL (Pattern Analysis Tracking Robberies
and Other Losses), is designed to collect, analyze and distribute
pharmacy theft intelligence to law enforcement throughout the nation.

Hager hopes that legislation comes swiftly because it can "protect
doctors and our pharmacies," and it's "a very good idea."