Prescription pills easy to find, but hard for law enforcement to
fight
Prescription drug abuse is on the rise, especially of dangerous
narcotics, but local law enforcement agencies can do little to curb
the problem.
”
We come across it if we do arrest [someone] for other crimes and
we find they have the pills without a prescription,
”
said Gilroy anti-crime investigator, Pedro Espinoza.
”
It is illegal to use it without a prescription, just like any
other narcotic drug.
”
Prescription pills easy to find, but hard for law enforcement to fight
Prescription drug abuse is on the rise, especially of dangerous narcotics, but local law enforcement agencies can do little to curb the problem.
“We come across it if we do arrest [someone] for other crimes and we find they have the pills without a prescription,” said Gilroy anti-crime investigator, Pedro Espinoza. “It is illegal to use it without a prescription, just like any other narcotic drug.”
But he acknowledged that the Gilroy Police department rarely comes across prescription drugs and making arrests for them is even more uncommon.
“At the high school level, a lot of this stuff doesn’t go reported,” Espinoza said.
For teens, pilfering prescription drugs, especially narcotic painkillers, can be as easy as taking pills out of their parents’ medicine cabinet. But if the medicine cabinet is empty or parents’ prescriptions kept under lock and key, the drugs are still accessible on the street.
A Gilroy man who runs in circles with people who have used or sold prescription pills, said there are plenty of drugs being bought on the streets. One drug that is increasing in popularity is OxyContin, a strong narcotic painkiller.
A generic version of the drug came onto the market in March 2004. OxyContin and the generic form of the drug are available legally as a prescription pain medication. When swallowed whole, the time-release pill releases the medication slowly over a 12-hour period. The active ingredient in the drug is oxycodone hydrochloride. It is used to treat moderate or severe pain continuously over an extended period. The painkiller is prescribed to cancer patients and others with chronic pain.
“I never popped it,” said the 25-year-old local, who talked on condition of anonymity. “I never took it because to me it was heroin in pill form and that scares the shit out of me.”
People he knows who sell the pills don’t use them, he said, because they know how strong they are.
“Its definitely around. Local drug dealers are buying it from out-of-the-area drug dealers,” he said. “500 pills can be gone in a week.”
People who are afraid of needles and would never try heroin are willing to try OxyContin, he said.
“They think it’s a pill and they dissolve it in water or crush it up,” he said.”The dealer might be out of something, like Vicodin which goes for $5 [per pill], and they offer them OxyContin instead. They take it without realizing what it is.”
A study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reinforces the local’s view that popping a pill might be seen as less risky than taking other drugs. The study found that while smoking and most illicit drug use is on the decline for teens, abuse of prescription drugs is a growing problem nationally.
The survey and results are reported as part of a study called “Monitoring the Future,” which is put together by the University of Michigan each year. The study reports teen attitudes and habits. It includes those involving drugs.
As many as 5.5 percent of high school seniors surveyed said they had used OxyContin, the powerful time-release narcotic, in 2005. In 2002, only 4 percent of high school seniors said they had used the drug.
OxyContin, also known as oxycodone, and another narcotic painkiller, Vicodin, were classified as “narcotics other than heroin” by the study until 2002. Investigators added a specific question about the use of each drug that year because of concern about their widespread use.
Since 2002, use of OxyContin has increased 40 percent among high school seniors, according to the study.
“Considering the addictive potentialof this drug, these are disturbingly high rates of use contrasting with an annual prevalence of less than 1 percent in all three grades for heroin,” wrote one of the investigators, Lloyd Johnston.
Vicodin use peaked in 2003 and has been on the decline since then, while heroin use remained steady at 0.8 percent. With 20 percent of high school seniors reporting use of OxyContin, the drug has found its way into a variety of cliques and groups on campuses across the country.
OxyContin abuse came to national attention as a major problem in rural Maine, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, earning it the nickname “Hillbilly heroin,” according to the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The local man who said he knows people who use the drug said they most often dissolve the pills in water and drink them. The pills are also chewed before they are swallowed, crushed and snorted or dissolved and injected to release the dosage all at once.
Though the drug can have lethal side effects when used illegally, it can provide a life worth living to those who take prescribed OxyContin.
Wayne Johns, a San Jose man, has been taking the drug for three years. He currently uses 10 mg pills that he takes three times a day.
“Nothing else was working and they tried everything for me,” Johns said. “The doctor said it was the best drug for me and the only drug that would work for me.”
Johns uses OxyContin to treat chronic pain caused by nerve damage caused by a work-related accident.
“It got me out of bed. I was bed-ridden until they got me this,” he said. “I couldn’t even get up to do household chores.”
Johns uses the drug to take the edge off his pain and said he has never gotten a “high” off taking the drug according to his doctor’s orders. He even asked his doctor to cut his 20 milligram prescription in half because it caused problems focusing and made him drowsy.
“I just want it to function,” he said. “Now I get out from time to time.”
The prescription label, when it is bought legally, warns that pills are not to be broken, chewed or crushed or it can release a potentially fatal dose of the medication. Higher dosage of the medications, 80 or 160 milligrams, are meant to be used only by patients who have a high tolerance for opioids, because it can cause fatal respiratory depression in others.
The drug stimulates opioid receptors in the central nervous system, which creates a combination of euphoria and analgesia. OxyContin has harsh withdrawal symptoms that include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting. While smaller dosages of the pill sell for $5-10, a higher dosage of the pill can go for as much as $65-80, costing users more as they build up a tolerance to the drug.
Though hard statistics were not available anecdotal evidence suggests that some users move on to using heroin because it is cheaper to get and offers the same effects. Prevalence of the drug in South Santa Clara and San Benito Counties of OxyContin and other prescription drug use is hard to pin down.
When people are arrested while under the influence, they are charged with using a stimulant or a depressant, said anti-crime investigator Espinoza.
Those arrested are tested for the specific drug in their system. OxyContin shows up as codone, the active ingredient found in heroin, making it hard to distinguish between the street drug and the prescription drug. Local hospital emergency rooms were also unable to offer an idea of how many people come in for overdoses of OxyContin.
“It’s not an easy number to give,” said a spokesperson for Santa Clara Valley Medical, in San Jose. “We don’t have to report it unless there is a criminal investigation involved.”
Valley Medical does not track data of drug overdoses, so the information would only be found in individual medical charts, which are protected by patient confidentiality.
Even the DEA is hard pressed to estimate the number of people using the drug locally because the agency is focused on drug trafficking, and does not work on curbing drug abuse per se.
The DEA is the organization charged with stopping the spread of OxyContin, which is found on the streets in 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160-milligram tablets. The generic OxyContin comes in only 80 milligrams and is seen as a problem by the DEA because of its potential to cause overdoses, though the drug is not as rampant in California as in other parts of the country.
“We aren’t really seeing it like we are on the East Coast,” said Casey McEnry, a public information officer for the DEA’s San Francisco bureau. “It could be like methamphetamines that worked their way west.”
While McEnry could not comment on any local ongoing investigations of prescription drug trafficking, she did say that the office hasn’t had any recent seizures of OxyContin. They haven’t had increased reports of thefts or losses of the drugs from doctors or pharmacies, either, she said. Anyone handling drugs such as OxyContin through legal channels is required to report lost drugs to the DEA.
“There are pharmacies back east that have signs in their windows saying ‘We don’t carry OxyContin,’ because they don’t want to be robbed,” McEnry said.
But the drugs being sold in the area are not necessarily from local doctors’ offices or pharmacies.
“The Internet is a viable source that we have seen with prescriptions being illegally sold and delivered to people’s homes,” McEnry said.
The DEA targeted online prescription drug trafficking in 2005 by starting their Virtual Enforcement Initiative last year. The initiative is an effort to take down online pharmacies that sell prescription drugs illegally. In April, “Operation CyberChase,” allowed the DEA to identify more than 200 Web sites that sold pharmaceuticals illegally.
Anti-crime Investigator Espinoza said the Gilroy police department knows prescription drug abuse is going on locally, and there are plenty of ways that people get their hands on the drugs without legitimate prescriptions.
“There is no secret that drugs are being offered [online] from narcotics to methamphetamine to ecstasy,” he said.
He even said the police department has seen instances where people chat on networking Web sites such as Myspace.com and inquire about purchasing drugs.
“There’s doctor shopping, people exchanging prescriptions or going to the pharmacy with fake prescriptions,” Espinoza said. “There are so many Web sites it is so easily attainable, especially from pharmacies in Mexico.”
