Law enforcement, legislature target pills as peskiest drug problem

By LLUVIA RUEDA

March, 8, 2009

When Dianna Childress, 45, has a headache, she pops a pain pill. When her busy schedule causes her stress, the Vidor resident says Xanax is her medicine of choice.

She has legal prescriptions for both, but admits she often uses them as an escape from life, rather than to control her medical condition.

"My life is so hard sometimes and I know people are gonna say I sound like a big baby. Everyone has it rough, I know. and I know I'm not special, I ain't as tough as people I know," said Childress, a waitress in Orange who was diagnosed with chronic tension headaches and moderate anxiety in November 2007.

"I'm not doing anything illegal like selling them or getting them on the street," she said.

A sharp rise in the use of controlled substances, and the resurgence of area local pain management clinics also known as "pill mills," has Southeast Texas law enforcement agencies struggling to cope with the sheer volume of drug-related cases they are encountering daily.

Arrest logs in Jefferson, Hardin and Orange counties reveal that more than half of all DWI and controlled substance arrest cases are based on recreational use of prescription medications, said Maj. Jim Singletary of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office narcotics division.

"It's no longer crack and methamphetamine that are the biggest problems in the drug world. It's the medications that your mother or your grandmother take. It's the legal prescriptions," Singletary told The Enterprise.

Pain killers like OxyContin and Hydrocodone, along with Soma, a muscle relaxant, and Xanax, a sedative, are some of the most popular street drugs, according to local police officials.

That those drugs are available, relatively cheap and seemingly harmless make them popular. That popularity has created a hotbed of criminal activity in Southeast Texas, as well as in the Houston and Baytown areas, law enforcement contends.

Hydrocodone, also known as Vicodin, sells on the street for $4 to $6 a pill; Soma runs about $1 to $2 for each tablet and OxyContin sells for about $1 per milligram, according to information on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's Web site.

"Oxycontin abuse is on the increase, with most illegal prescriptions being written by pain management doctors," the Web site notes.

"The major avenues for diversion continue to be illegal and indiscriminate prescribing and dispensing, pharmacy theft, employee pilferage, and forged prescriptions," it says.

The start of the spread

The drugs' popularity surged about four or five years ago, when the emergence of pain management clinics began changing the local preferences of marijuana and meth to the "chill pills," officials said.

"When the pain management clinics came in, that's when the drugs were really introduced in the area. We would have about five deaths related to these drugs every year before then. Now, the numbers have risen to about 50 to 60 people dying every year," Singletary said.

In Jefferson County alone, prescription drugs were a factor in 61 deaths in 2008, according to statistics from the Southeast Texas Forensic Center.

All three counties reported that prescription drug usage has gone up about 20 percent each year since 2005. Narcotics division leaders said statistics are based on informant information, overdose deaths and DWI arrests.

Police filed 696 controlled substance criminal cases in the Beaumont area in 2007, a total which dropped in 2008 to 567 cases. Two pain clinics were closed down in 2007, according to the statistics.

In Lumberton, 135 narcotics cases and 54 drug-related DWI cases are on the books for 2008.

Orange County recorded 80 drug arrests, 88 drug-related DWI arrests and the closing of five pill mills last year, according to the statistics.

And even though narcotics divisions do close pain management clinics, the operations often resurface with a different name, a different doctor or a different location.

"We had some that would open up about two weeks later on the other side of the street from their original locations," said Sam Kittrell, Orange police chief.

"It was literally the same place."

Closed clinics not a deterrent

Combined efforts in 2008 led to the eradication of most local mills but medication abuse still is on the rise as people turn to theft, "doctor-shopping," individual dealers or organized crime rings.

Singletary said doctors who prescribe drugs outside the standard of the medical profession are subject to the same federal laws used to prosecute distributors of illegal drugs such as crack cocaine or methamphetamine.

A doctor who is convicted of improperly prescribing medications could serve up to 20 years in prison, depending on the quantity of medication, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

However, officials said the real problem lies in a practice called "doctor shopping."

"We have had problems with people coming into the area and scouting around for different doctors. One middle-class man, a 68-year-old, went to all the pharmacies and doctors in town in and around Hardin County to keep supplying his addiction," said Lumberton Police Chief Danny Sullins.

"There were about 10 cases of that kind of drug 'shopping' last year."

Local pharmacies and doctor's offices try to alert authorities, Sullins said, but dealers have adapted by selling the medications in their own homes or in street deals.

Dealers working from Beaumont homes were targeted during raids late in February and earlier this month, and investigators uncovered over 5,000 units of pain medications. A January 2008 raid in Orange turned up more than 6,000 dosage units, local officials said.

Other drugs are found by simple legwork.

"We find most of them through routine operations, such as pulling someone over for running a red light, loitering or standard DWI procedures. We have found more drugs that way than by any other method," Sullins said.

Raids uncover depth, breadth of problem

Pharmaceuticals have transcended the usual drug-user demographics of age, race and financial circumstances, causing a scramble for information and new units among most Texas narcotics agencies.

"Investigations dealing with prescription medications cover such a wide sweep of demographics that we found we had to adapt," said Duane Steen, assistant commander for the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin.

The result was the Drug Diversion Investigative Unit formed in September 2008, after Orange police and others told Austin offices of the heightened activities in Southeast Texas, Houston and Baytown.

"We are simply trying to bring the manpower and the resources to where the problem is," he said.

But even that won't fix things.

Vague legislative rulings, budgets cuts, a shortage of police officers and internal issues have slowed law enforcement reactions to prescription abuse, police officials said.

The biggest Goliath is bureaucratic red tape.

"There are two major issues: A person does not have to be a doctor to own a pain management clinic. And there is no law against doctor shopping right now for the state of Texas," Singletary said.

Testing methods for DWI arrests also are paperwork nightmares.

In Texas, DWI arrests are made when a driver tests out with an alcohol content of .08 or when an officer deems someone to be intoxicated using other criteria.

And although no section of the penal code addresses driving under the influence specifically, the intoxication definition is construed to mean the person lacks the normal mental or physical faculties necessary to drive a motor vehicle because of alcohol, a controlled substance, a drug or dangerous drug, or a combination of two or more of those, according to the Texas Penal Code. It also covers "any other substance in the body."

Even if officers get a blood sample for crime lab analysis to prove or disprove the presence of drugs, the analysis can take from six months to a year, officials said.

Money is another concern.

"Budget can be a problem. They and we are working to keep a proactive, aggressive stance on the matter, but the departments cannot afford to put their men on a full-time narcotics unit without losing efforts on patrol," Hardin County Sheriff Ed Cain said.

So the answer is …

Teamwork among counties, state narcotics units and legislators might offer the best solution, or at least that's the current consensus.

Steen said the Austin administration is looking to develop more Southeast Texas contacts.

Texas legislators also have taken notice of the problems and say they plan to address the issue during the 81st legislative session.

"We did have some laws to make it easier to file the paperwork dealing with pharmaceuticals in the last session, bills that helped pharmacies track down on repeated buying. Now we are looking to make it a little bit tougher, by passing a law similar to the recent Louisiana 'Doctor Shopping Act,' and looking to file it by next Friday," Texas Rep. Mike Hamilton, R-Mauriceville, said.

The Louisiana law - Act 287 - forbids the practice of obtaining a controlled dangerous substance from one health-care professional while being provided with a controlled substance by another health-care professional without disclosing that information. The law went into effect Aug. 15, 2007.

"We want people to know that we are aware of the issues and are currently drawing up a plan for the bill," Hamilton said.

In the meantime, rigorous patrol work and constant communication are the weapons in the fight.

"Hopefully, there will be a way for us to make sure that we are helping the residents stay safe and make sure that the departments are not strained. Let's hope it's soon," Kittrell said.

Drug Related Deaths in Texas

2002: 3,119

2001: 2,851

2000: 2,605

1999: 2,237

1998: 2,392

Source: Texas Department of State and Health Services

http://www.tcada.state.tx.us/research/statistics/statetotals.shtml

2007 Federal Drug Seizures

Cocaine: 13,134.6 kgs.

Heroin: 109.3 kgs.

Methamphetamine: 322.7 kgs./92 dosage units

Marijuana: 490,313.8 kgs.

Hashish: 0.2 kgs.

MDMA: 69,341 dosage units

Meth Lab Incidents: 78 (DEA, state, and local)

Source: U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/state_factsheets/texas.html

RESOURCES:

DEA Office Beaumont Resident Office: (409) 839-2461