OXYCONTIN REMAINS MAJOR PAIN IN W.VA.

Pills Pop Up; Source Unknown

As OxyContin rose to prominence as a highly addictive, recreational
substance, local law enforcement agencies thought they understood the
prescription painkiller's supply lines.

People duped doctors into believing they had pain, "shopping" from
physician to physician. They broke into pharmacies. Maybe they had some
degree of pain, but the lure of selling the medicine on the street at $1 a
milligram was too strong.

Now, authorities are seeing a new stream of the Schedule II painkiller.
It's coming to West Virginia from other states, such as Maryland, in ways
yet to be determined.

The late Kenneth Dunbar of Belle told police that he and other Kanawha
Valley sellers received approximately 10,000 OxyContin pills from suppliers
William Gilbert, 51, of Baltimore, and Mitchell Gentry, 52, of Frederick, Md.

That supply flowed in between January 2000 and January 2001, Dunbar told
police, helping Dunbar to afford a new Chrysler PT Cruiser. The day before
Dunbar's Jan. 17, 2001, arrest, Gilbert and Gentry had sold him 1,000 pills
for $25,000, Dunbar said in court records.

Dunbar was the grandfather of Robert Copen, who was convicted of shooting
and killing a Belle hairdresser in 1999 with an assault rifle.

Gilbert and Gentry pleaded guilty, after members of the Metro Drug
Enforcement Network Team found 148 OxyContin pills in their possession a
year ago. They also possessed 186 Lortab, or hydrocodone, pills and 46
Percocets. Percocet is a less-concentrated form of oxycodone, the sole
ingredient in OxyContin.

Police found the drugs in a Fairfield Inn hotel room and in a Cadillac.
They also found about $70,000 in cash on the men.

Dunbar's cooperation allowed him to escape with three months of probation,
though police confiscated his new vehicle. Gentry received seven years and
three months in prison, Gilbert four years and nine months. They were
sentenced in October in U.S. District Court.

Last week, Jim and Thorna Alexander of Aberdeen, Md., were nabbed in Mercer
County by a Southern West Virginia task force. Federal agents and other
officers allege that the Alexanders attempted to sell $16,000 worth of
OxyContin to an informant.

How did that many pills find their way into the state? No one knows.
Gilbert and Gentry pleaded guilty but volunteered no further information.

"Drug dealers are getting pills at the wholesale level, like a pharmacy
would," said Steve Neddo, commander of the MDENT unit. "We still don't have
a very good handle on that."

Neddo can't imagine a scenario in which a dealer painstakingly buys up
prescriptions or manages to successfully rob that many pharmacies.

One Kanawha County source familiar with the OxyContin trade said some
dealers are successful in fronting as pharmacies. This would require a
specific Drug Enforcement Agency number.

Neither Neddo nor John Parr, a deputy U.S. attorney general, have heard of
dealers successfully pulling off such a scheme.

The drugs could be coming from Mexico, says Robin Hogen, a spokesman for
Purdue-Pharma, the Connecticut company that manufactures OxyContin. Hogen
said future pills from Mexico would be marked differently than standard
OxyContin.

Wherever they're coming from, Neddo says, OxyContin use in rural West
Virginia isn't tapering off.

"It's still the drug of choice," he said. "I would never have believed it,
if you told me 10 years ago that a prescription drug would have taken off
like this."

Neddo said his unit in January launched investigations of 11 OxyContin
cases in Kanawha County, three more than all of last year. Each case could
net multiple arrests and indictments.

Those statistics could be higher, he said, but the unit has trouble
infiltrating eastern Kanawha County, where much of the OxyContin abuse in
the valley takes place.

"It's a lot harder to get into rural areas, to get in and make buys," Neddo
said. "You need cooperating individuals. You don't just drive up Paint
Creek. It takes time and work at getting into places."

Kanawha County, Neddo said, pretty much mirrors the stereotype of OxyContin
as a rural drug of choice. Within the city of Charleston, where it is
easier for officers to find informants, crack cocaine still dominates.
Neddo said his unit made 87 crack arrests last year.

Statewide, Parr said, other task forces are making inroads. MDENT and the
FBI have charged eight people and convicted five. Three are pending trial.

In Wyoming, Mingo and Logan counties, 16 convictions have resulted from a
cooperation between officers from Logan and Boone counties, State Police
and Gilbert police. Gilbert is the tiny Mingo County town that sounded one
of the first OxyContin alarms in late 2000, calling for help to fight the
phenomenon.

The Mercer-McDowell area police who arrested the Alexanders have arrested
11 people, Parr said. Five have pleaded guilty, with another four to plead
guilty this week.

In eastern Kanawha County, Neddo's unit arrested a former mayor for intent
to distribute oxycodone.

Police used a federal search warrant to find 13 OxyContin pills - nine of
40 milligrams and four of 20 milligrams - in the Cedar Grove home of Harry
Hager. Hager is a former mayor of the town.

According to a complaint filed in federal court, officers allege that Hager
admitted his intention to sell the drugs.