Pubdate: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 Source: Register-Herald, The (WV) Contact: 2003 The Register-Herald Website: http://www.register-herald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1441 Author: Jessica Shifflett, Register-Herald Reporter Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone) OPERATION 'OXYCLEAN Victim's Sister Claims Dealers Of Oxycontin Know No Bounds Michael Tilley's wake was nothing extraordinary. Illegal dealers of the drug OxyContin strolled casually through the crowd of mourners gathered at the funeral home, speaking somberly to Michael's friends and offering their condolences to the family. It was the lackluster ordinariness of the Jan. 9 event that catapulted Michael's sister, Marina Harmon, from fear to anger. Tilley, a Sabine resident, died Jan. 6 after accidentally overdosing on a lethal cocktail of OxyContin and other drugs. "I'm standing at my brother's coffin. Somebody taps me on my shoulder, and when I turned around, there was one of the biggest drug dealers in Wyoming County," Harmon said angrily, recalling that night. The 33-year-old Bolt resident wrote to The Register-Herald, describing the insult she felt when those who had sold her brother the drugs that caused his death attended his wake. "I was amazed at how many drug dealers showed up to pay their respects," Harmon wrote. "It's just audacity and foolish braveness ... Chances are, they left this wake and dealt drugs to someone else's son, brother or loved one." Harmon said her brother's death has led her to question herself, police and neighbors about what is going on in her home county - where, she says, everybody knows somebody who is either hooked on or selling OxyContin. - - - - - - OxyContin - the brand name for a highly addictive prescription painkiller - hit rural Appalachia in the 1990s the way crack cocaine hit the inner cities during the 1980s, according to police. The active ingredient, oxycodone, is in a time-released tablet, making it an effective painkiller. Abusers dilute the protective coating off the pill and chew it, or crush it and snort it, circumventing the time-release effect and making for a quick high. West Virginia is among a number of states, along with Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio, that are the most ravaged by OxyContin abuse, according to U.S. Department of Justice officials. In Wyoming County, abuse of the drug has become so widespread that Sheriff C.S. Parker last year established "OxyClean," a series of ongoing drug busts of OxyContin dealers and addicts. The program netted about 70 offenders last year and several more so far this year. "It's a tremendous problem out here," Chief Deputy Randall Aliff said. "It's not just in Wyoming County, but we're trying to do something with this problem." - - - - - - The county's two main industries of mining and logging mark it as a spot likely to cultivate OxyContin dealers and addicts because - as was true in Tilley's case - the drug is commonly prescribed as a painkiller for back injuries, black lung and cancer, according to sociologists. The 25 percent poverty rate in Wyoming County - compared to just over 12 percent nationally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau - could also make county residents more vulnerable to widespread OxyContin abuse. Experts say increased poverty levels lead some people to sell the drug for extra cash. Senior citizens living off Social Security and pensions aren't immune, either. "We've arrested people from every section of the county for selling this drug," Aliff said. "We arrested someone 82 years old. We've arrested people in their 70s for selling this drug." In small towns throughout Wyoming County, Harmon said, everybody knows everybody. So most pushers aren't too hard to identify. "I grew up beside them, lived in the same town with them. I've known them all my life," she said. Aliff added that in the past 18 months there have been about 10 OxyContin-related deaths in the county of 25,320 residents. - - - - - - Harmon said her brother had been taking OxyContin for four years prior to his death after a Beckley physician prescribed it for a back injury. "Michael said what I didn't understand about the drug is that it wasn't as easy as I thought it was (to quit)," she recalled. "He said once you take that drug, it owns you. I remember him saying it owns you." Harmon said she has seen well known pushers making deals in broad daylight while law-abiding citizens fearfully isolate themselves and their children from the drug culture she says is overtaking Wyoming County. "Everybody's afraid. Nobody will face up against these drug dealers," she said. "I want justice to be served, for them to be afraid of us instead of us being afraid of them. I want it to be like it used to be, that they at least had to hide to do their deals. "They should have to worry about who sees them or be scared to death about whose kid they deal to. We live in fear, and the wrong people are afraid." Local dealers stop their cars in the middle of the road, holding up traffic while customers lean inside to buy drugs, Harmon reported - a complaint the sheriff's department regularly responds to, Aliff acknowledged. "Some of these dealers have already been busted," she explained. "They were out two days later and they got more customers than they ever had. It didn't even slow them down." - - - - - - Meanwhile, the class of OxyContin addicts is getting fatter, she added. "I've got family members that live just to do Oxy," Harmon said. "I have a teen-age daughter, and I know sometimes she probably feels like she hates me because I won't let her out of the house." Harmon said she's weary of tiptoeing around illegal dealers and issued a plea to communities to join forces to fight illegal drug deals in Wyoming County. "Our kids can be next. We can bury one of ours over the same thing (OxyContin)," she pleaded. Parker agreed with Harmon's view that repeat offenders are rampant in the county. "It's a revolving door," he said. "We put them in; they get out. We put them back in ... These people need to go to prison. There's too much money for them to quit." Despite deputies fighting the rampant abuse and magistrates setting increasingly higher bonds for dealers, Parker said, offenders manage to get out of the system and back in the community - where they have ready access to OxyContin. "My department is going to keep working drugs daily and we're going to keep arresting these people and try to keep them out of the communities," Parker promised. "But all we can do is work the case and have a good case and arrest them. After that, it's up to the courts." - - - - - - The sheriff says OxyContin is a full-time job for his deputies. "We started running into OxyContin on the street (about two or three years ago). It's the big thing down here now. It's what everybody wants. Addicts say once you do it, you've got to have it." Which translates into big bucks for dealers, according to the sheriff. The street price for OxyContin - marketed in 20-, 40- and 80-milligram tablets - is $1 per milligram, Parker said. According to Parker, poverty makes for good business for an OxyContin dealer in Wyoming County. "Most of these people selling this stuff aren't paying for the prescriptions anyway," the sheriff reported. "They're either on some kind of assistance through the state or their insurance pays for it." Mostly, he said, public assistance pays for it. "Nine out of 10 (dealers) don't have jobs," he said flatly. "Most of these people don't want to work. They're making big money on selling dope. "We arrested a lady last month ... we confiscated her money. Some of our buy money (police money used to make an illegal deal for arrest purposes) was in that money, plus she had food stamps in there." - - - - - - Harmon said her brother was first prescribed OxyContin in 1997 for chronic back pain, adding she and other family members didn't believe his injury was highly painful to him. "He was able to work," she insisted. "Michael was not disabled from work." Although FDA data indicate OxyContin is a highly effective pain-killer with few side effects if prescribed and used properly, Parker verified a report that his office is "looking into" the OxyContin prescription practices of an unidentified Wyoming County physician. Other doctors have become helpful, calling police when a known offender requests an OxyContin prescription, Parker said. "They're cutting them off, which is helping some. But the (dealers) go out of state to North Carolina or Virginia and end up getting a prescription for it." - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk