Pharmacists statewide will soon get information from the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy that will help them explain to patients the need to be careful with the pain drug methadone. Also, the West Virginia Medical Association plans to educate doctors about the risks involved in prescribing methadone, and the state Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse is educating addiction counselors about methadone. A Gazette investigation published last week found that methadone is helping to kill more people nationwide than any other prescription narcotic, and West Virginia's methadone death rate is the nation's highest. - advertisement [continues 424 words]
Senators Want Stronger FDA Warning About Methadone Two U.S. senators are calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to respond to thousands of overdose deaths being blamed on the prescription painkiller methadone. A Sunday Gazette-Mail investigation published last week found that methadone is helping to kill more people nationwide than any other prescription narcotic, and West Virginia's methadone death rate is the nation's highest. Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the FDA should move quickly to warn doctors and the public about the danger of misusing methadone. - advertisement [continues 923 words]
Methadone ACROSS West Virginia and the nation, patients consume a powerful painkiller called methadone, and an alarming number of them die. The drug -- once used mostly as a heroin substitute to help addicts wean themselves from their habit -- is increasingly prescribed for pain, sometimes because of its effectiveness, sometimes because it's cheap. Nationally, death certificates show that 2,992 Americans were killed by the drug in 2003. But that's a conservative count. Not every family asks for an autopsy and not every cause of death is discovered. The number of deaths has climbed, nearly quadrupling from 790 in 1999. Eighty-two percent of those fatalities were declared accidental. [continues 395 words]
THIS week's mass murder in a drug-infested St. Albans suburb raises a troubling thought: Much of America's criminality and gun violence among addicts and illegal drug dealers apparently is spawned by the nation's harsh prohibition of narcotics. Almost a century ago, the United States plunged into Prohibition, the criminalization of alcohol. Immediately, illicit dealers began supplying bootleg booze in the shadows. Gun battles erupted between rival rum-runners. Prisons were crammed with alcohol offenders. Police and judges were bribed to overlook "speakeasy" bars. Street gangs and the Mafia grew in that grotesque time. [continues 447 words]
ACROSS West Virginia and the nation, patients consume a powerful painkiller called methadone, and an alarming number of them die. The drug -- once used mostly as a heroin substitute to help addicts wean themselves from their habit -- is increasingly prescribed for pain, sometimes because of its effectiveness, sometimes because it's cheap. Nationally, death certificates show that 2,992 Americans were killed by the drug in 2003. But that's a conservative count. Not every family asks for an autopsy and not every cause of death is discovered. The number of deaths has climbed, nearly quadrupling from 790 in 1999. Eighty-two percent of those fatalities were declared accidental. - advertisement [continues 390 words]
Five years ago, Mike Blake walked into his daughters bedroom and found his wife lying on the floor, dead from an overdose of methadone and Xanax. The 39-year-old mother of two from Indianapolis had just started taking methadone. A doctor had prescribed it for her back pain, Mike Blake said. "My little girl was only 2 years old when that happened," Blake said in a recent interview with the Gazette. "She doesn't have a mother now." Around the same time, newspapers and television stations around the country started reporting on overdose victims who took methadone, like Pam Blake. [continues 1067 words]
'ONE PILL CAN KILL' Education, Surveillance Can Prevent Methadone Overdose Deaths On Memorial Day weekend in 2004, a traveling fair came to the small town of Oconto Falls, Wis. Sixteen-year-old Josh Engebregtsen and three of his friends decided to go. His mother, Sue, remembers the night. Everything seemed so normal. Her son called before his 9 p.m. curfew, asked if he could stay at his friend's house. The boys went home, sat up talking until 3 a.m. [continues 1299 words]
Lynda Lee was recuperating in her Texas home following back surgery one day in November 2004. The 59-year-old nurse took the pain medicine her doctor had prescribed -- methadone -- then lay down on the couch in front of the television. Her son found her there several hours later, dead. She had stopped breathing. The medical examiner said the cause of death was acute methadone intoxication. "The coroner said there wasn't much in her system. It could have just been two pills," her daughter, Alisha Regan, told the Gazette. - advertisement [continues 1495 words]
Five years ago, Mike Blake walked into his daughter's bedroom and found his wife lying on the floor, dead from an overdose of methadone and Xanax. The 39-year-old mother of two from Indianapolis had just started taking methadone. A doctor had prescribed it for her back pain, Mike Blake said. "My little girl was only 2 years old when that happened," Blake said in a recent interview with the Gazette. "She doesn't have a mother now." - advertisement [continues 1370 words]
The Sunday Gazette-Mail's investigation of nationwide methadone deaths was prompted by an obscure entry in a West Virginia vital statistics report. Accidental poisoning deaths in the state had shot up dramatically in five years, reporter Scott Finn noticed. He thought it might be toddlers ingesting cleaning supplies, or maybe people overdosing on OxyContin. He called the medical examiner's office to check. No, he was told. The main culprit was a drug called methadone. Reporter Tara Tuckwiller had been reporting on methadone clinics -- treatment centers that sell daily doses of legal methadone to calm addicts' cravings for illegal drugs -- since they began to crop up in West Virginia in 2001. - advertisement [continues 183 words]
Feds Approve Outdated, Potentially Deadly Drug Information One increasingly popular painkiller is helping to kill more people than any other prescription narcotic, a Sunday Gazette-Mail investigation has found. Patients could die if they take the "usual adult dosage" on methadone's package insert -- information that comes with the prescription and was approved by the federal government. Despite knowing about methadone's dangers, federal officials have not strengthened the warnings most doctors and patients receive about methadone, Sunday Gazette-Mail reporters discovered. - advertisement [continues 2299 words]
FDA-Approved Language Called "Extremely Dangerous" The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a "usual adult dosage" on the package insert for methadone that several studies say could be deadly. "The usual adult dosage is 2.5 mg to 10 mg every three or four hours as necessary," reads the drug's package insert under "For Relief of Pain." Someone reading that label could believe it is safe for an adult to consume up to 80 milligrams of methadone a day. - advertisement [continues 1370 words]
What it is: Methadone is a synthetic opiate developed by the Germans during World War II as a substitute for morphine. What it isn't: Methadone often is confused with "meth," or methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant commonly cooked in clandestine labs. Methadone is a completely different -- and legal -- drug. Uses: Until recently, methadone was given mostly to heroin addicts to suppress their cravings. Now, doctors are increasingly prescribing it as a painkiller. Dangers: Methadone acts differently from other painkillers. It can stay in the body for an unusually long time, making it possible for therapeutic doses to build up to a toxic level. [continues 78 words]
FORT GAY -- Just weeks ago, Joetta Hatfield was slicing bologna for a customer in the 60-year-old, family-owned general store when the lady asked if it was true that millions of dollars were stashed in mattresses sold at the business. "I said, 'Do you think I'd be standing here slicing bologna if I had millions in mattressesUKP'" she said. It's been almost three years -- June 2003 -- since police swooped in on the Hatfield family business, arresting her husband, Shannon, and son, Landon, and charging them with selling cocaine. A few months later, they returned and arrested Shannon again. - advertisement [continues 1798 words]
St. Albans Students Learn About Meth's Instant Addiction One student asked another to help steady her arm in the restroom so she could shoot up meth. Throughout the year, St. Albans High teachers had watched her become thinner and thinner. The girl donned a down jacket most of the time at school - no matter what the weather. After learning about what happened from the other student in the restroom, Vice Principal Robin Francis immediately went on a locker search. Inside the girl's book bag, Francis found the well of a metal spoon, a lighter, a syringe full of the amber-colored drug and tubing to cinch the arm. [continues 697 words]
Tracking down drug dealers, prosecuting them and putting them in jail costs U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year. Some people believe drug use should be decriminalized, especially for marijuana. Smoking marijuana may be less harmful than drinking beer, wine or liquor. Norm Stamper, former police chief in Seattle, takes the argument a big step further in his Oct. 16 column in the Los Angeles Times. "I don't favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD. ... [continues 395 words]
Drug Policies Don't Work Tracking down drug dealers, prosecuting them and putting them in jail costs U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year. Some people believe drug use should be decriminalized, especially for marijuana. Smoking marijuana may be less harmful than drinking beer, wine or liquor. Norm Stamper, former police chief in Seattle, takes the argument a big step further in his Oct. 16 column in the Los Angeles Times. "I don't favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD. ... [continues 394 words]
Sadly, numerous injured or sick Americans suffer severe pain. Sadly, many terminal patients are wracked by agony. Potent painkillers are available to ease this suffering -- but America's hysteria over narcotics interferes with their care. Conservative politicians try to prevent dying people from using marijuana medically to soothe their distress. And many doctors hesitate to prescribe adequate doses of palliatives such as OxyContin because they fear that federal drug agents may file criminal charges against them. It's true that a few patients resell their prescription painkillers as street drugs. And it may be true that an extremely rare few physicians are so hard up for income that they cooperate with this illicit traffic. But this abuse is small, compared to the giant number of patients who use painkillers correctly. [continues 203 words]
Billions For What? Average folks find it hard to understand why a small minority of Americans desire to dope themselves into oblivion with narcotics. But this need is quite real, because illicit drugs are a gigantic U.S. industry, and the police war on drugs is a billion-dollar public burden. The narcotics realm keeps evolving. A few years ago, heroin was the favorite mind-blaster, then crystallized "crack" cocaine grabbed the spotlight, then OxyContin painkillers took center stage, and now "meth labs" making methamphetamine are the current menace. All the while, mild marijuana remains a bigger mainstay than the others. [continues 360 words]
Lately, it seems as though you can't turn on the local news without hearing about a meth lab bust somewhere in Kanawha County. Meth, short for methamphetamine, is a drug that has gone from relative obscurity to center stage in the past few years, and local law enforcement is doing everything it can to stop the problem. On Feb. 1, Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford partnered with Mike Agnello of WCHS Talk Radio 58 to educate the public on the dangers of meth. The two created the program "What's up with meth?" which they have since taken to schools and churches throughout Kanawha County. [continues 435 words]
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - The crippling reach of methamphetamine abuse has become the leading drug problem affecting local law enforcement agencies, according to a survey of 500 sheriff's departments in 45 states. About 90 percent of the sheriffs interviewed for a National Association of Counties survey released Tuesday reported increases in meth-related arrests in their counties over the last three years, and more than half of those interviewed said they considered meth the most serious problem their department faces. Meth-related arrests have packed jails in the Midwest and elsewhere and swamped other county-level agencies, which face additional work, such as caring for children whose parents have become addicted and cleaning up toxic chemicals left behind by meth cookers. The regions the report cites as having the greatest increase in meth arrests over the last five years include the upper Midwest, the Southwest and Northwest. [continues 481 words]
Purchase Of Some Cold Remedies To Require Picture ID, Signature Want to buy some cold medicine? Step right up and sign the logbook. Starting Friday, the purchase of some over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies will require a picture ID, a signature and reporting to the state Pharmacy Board, all in an effort to control the spread of illegal methamphetamine labs in West Virginia. West Virginia is the latest state to seek to control pseudoephedrine - -- found in some over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies. The chemical can be extracted and used to make meth. [continues 525 words]
Supreme Court Rules Federal Arrests Legal, Despite State Laws Allowing Use WASHINGTON -- People who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, overriding medical marijuana statutes in 10 states. The court's 6-3 decision was filled with sympathy for two seriously ill California women who brought the case, but the majority agreed that federal agents may arrest even sick people who use the drug as well as the people who grow pot for them. [continues 855 words]
Editor: The awful murder of the four teens in Huntington is even more sickening since it became apparent the event was drug-related. It is another sad example of how the war on drugs has made us less safe. While alcohol and drug abuse have basically the same side effects, they are harmful only to the small population of users and their families. And these problems can be countered with treatment and counseling. Since alcohol is legal, it is cheap. And because there is no great profit to be made selling whiskey, there are no violent gangs fighting over whiskey territories. Meanwhile, the black market created by drug prohibition enriches the criminals in our society, while the rest of us live in fear. Eradicating drug abuse is a laudable goal, but these murders show that prohibition carries too high a price. End the War on Drugs. Nate Orders Charleston [end]
WEST Virginia must ensure public safety. But it cannot afford to mortgage its economic and educational future to an ever-expanding prison system. In the last 10 years, the number of people locked in West Virginia's prisons more than doubled. Between 1994 and 2004, the state's prison population rose from 2,392 to 5,032, an increase of 110 percent. At the same time, both the state's population and its crime rate stayed about the same. The growth of people in prison significantly exceeds national trends, and many of the state's sentences are far longer than the national average. For some offenses, people spend far longer in prison than the national average. [continues 655 words]
# Smart Sentences Get Boost PUTTING nonviolent offenders into smarter, low-cost, rehabilitative probation - instead of locking them in crime-breeding steel cells at enormous taxpayer expense - makes good sense. Many West Virginia counties are pursuing this goal by creating "day reporting centers" where lesser defendants must check in regularly while holding jobs and supporting their families. They will receive guidance designed to prevent them from slipping back into crime. The trend began because rising jail costs are demolishing county budgets. Some of the increase stemmed from an increase in the daily price of locking people in cages. The newer regional jails are more expensive to run than the former county jails. But judges also are sentencing more people to jail. [continues 238 words]
West Virginia taxpayers pay about $6,500 each year for every full-time college student in the state. But taxpayers must pay almost $20,000 a year for each person incarcerated by the Division of Corrections. As a new report explains, expenses for Corrections are eating away at the rest of the state's budget and at the expense of education. The West Virginia Council of Churches, in partnership with a national organization called Grassroots Leadership and the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute, have produced a report titled, "Protecting the Future: Moderating West Virginia's Budget Crisis." [continues 354 words]
By the end of May, West Virginia should have a comprehensive strategy to combat methamphetamine, U.S. Attorney Kasey Warner said at the close of a statewide meth conference Wednesday. Over the next month, hundreds of West Virginians who attended the "Building Meth-Free Communities" summit this week will critique a list of recommendations to fight the drug, Warner said. A final report should be released by May 25. A draft report will be issued early next week, said conference co-coordinator Colleen Copple. [continues 200 words]
Groups must work together against drug, summit told U.S. Attorney Kasey Warner boiled down West Virginia's methamphetamine problem into a simple equation on Monday: "Meth is bad. We need to work together. We need more funds. Let's move on." Better cooperation among law enforcement, prosecution, federal agencies and community groups was established as the goal of the state's first summit on meth. The summit continues through Wednesday at the Charleston Marriott. Summit coordinator James E. Copple said the hundreds of interested people from across the state attending the "Building Meth-Free Communities" conference would create recommendations specifically for West Virginia. [continues 423 words]
The law of supply and demand applies to markets in the underworld as well as to those aboveboard in the world of buying and selling goods and services. That goes for such things as cars and clothes, also for illicit drugs. It means, for example, if no consumer demand for opium, no production and supply from Afghanistan. Or, no demand for heroin, no supply from Colombia. No demand for meth, no supply in West Virginia. State police and federal agents are busier now than ever in dismantling meth labs and busting dealers in the Kanawha Valley and other regions of the state. Demand for meth rises, along with supply to meet demand. [continues 420 words]
St. Albans City Council members discussed initial results from their new methamphetamine lab law during their meeting Monday night. In March, the council passed a law requiring owners of rental property used for clandestine drug manufacturing to pay to clean up the site before renting to new tenants. The law, the first of its kind in the state, also requires landlords to obtain a certificate from the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection to prove that the site is habitable. Councilman Tom McKeny told colleagues he received numerous comments about the new law, many of them negative, and wanted to know if other council members also had. - advertisement [continues 340 words]
When Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford took office, he could have immediately ordered all new stationery and thrown out perfectly good forms and envelopes with the old sheriff's name on them. But he didn't. His office used old envelopes and forms wherever possible to save money and to avoid wasting them. So far, Rutherford has shown the same kind of good sense and professionalism on even bigger issues: About a month ago, the department established a new tip line (357-4693) to report drug activity, particularly any information about methamphetamine labs. In less than a month, the department received 450 calls that led to the arrest of 29 people. [continues 412 words]
Why So Many Prisons AMERICA is tainted by its horrendous rate of prisoners locked in cells. This nation jails about six times more people per capita than do Canada, England, Mexico and other countries. The United States has 2.1 million citizens in steel cages. Since it costs about $22,000 to hold each convict annually, taxpayers must cough up $40 billion-plus per year for incarceration. California spends more for prisons than for higher education. Texas is the lock-"em-up capital, with more prisons than any other state. Texas has built 100 new prisons since 1980. [continues 305 words]
Proposal Limits Purchases Of Items Containing Meth Ingredient Legislation aimed at slowing down the production of methamphetamine by limiting the sale of products with meth's active ingredient unanimously passed the state Senate Tuesday and was sent to the House of Delegates. "I think we have carefully constituted a piece of legislation that is going to deal with this situation," said Senate Health and Human Resources Chairman Roman Prezioso, D-Marion. Senate Minority Leader Vic Sprouse, R-Kanawha, failed in three attempts to amend the legislation (SB147). He said each of his amendments would strengthen the bill, but his colleagues disagreed. [continues 647 words]
The Senate Health and Human Resources Committee moved Tuesday to further restrict the purchase of over-the-counter cold medicines that contain ingredients needed to make methamphetamine. Under the proposal, customers could only buy three packages of medicines like Sudafed each month without a prescription. The proposal also reduces the number of controlled cold medicines from about 250 to less than a dozen by targeting medicines that contain pseudoephedrine and other ingredients. "It takes a tremendous amount of this stuff to make meth," said Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, the committee's chairman. "This bill prevents the cooker from acquiring mass quantities." [continues 189 words]
The St. Albans City Council introduced an ordinance Monday night requiring the owners of buildings used as methamphetamine labs to clean them up before renting them out to other tenants. "I think it's an ordinance that council should pass unanimously," Councilman Mac Gray said. "To my knowledge, it is the only ordinance in the state that provides for civil penalties [for not cleaning up meth labs]." Under the new law, if a building is found to have been used as a drug lab, the property owner must keep people away until an environmental consultant cleans and tests the grounds to make sure the premises are safe for human habitation. Property owners also must notify the city of the results of the testing and clean up and provide the city's building inspector with a report. [continues 238 words]
Editor: The war on drugs has been totally ineffective and outrageously expensive, all the while corroding the moral compass of our paternalistic state authorities. Let us acknowledge that the drug laws have caused the unintentional deaths of innocent citizens. We need not rehash the deaths of innocents from drive-by shootings, home invasions, pharmacy heists or shootouts with police. Now I wish to bring to the attention of citizens that, because of drug laws, people without a modicum of training or reliable equipment are hastily trying to make methamphetamines with chemicals in poorly ventilated rooms and vehicles. [continues 119 words]
Inmates Spend More Time Behind Bars In the last decade, West Virginia saw its prison population and budget double without seeing an increase in crime or population. Today, three advocacy groups will release a report that says the state can cap its prison population, limit its spending on prisons, and spend the savings on higher education and social services without putting citizens at risk. "What we're trying to say is you've got a system that's just not working and it is costing the state an arm and leg," said Si Kahn of Grassroots Leadership, a Charlotte, N.C., group that produced the report with the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University and the West Virginia Council of Churches. "Put that money into early-childhood programs, put it into social services, put it into early childhood development, put it into business development." [continues 736 words]
West Virginia Upsurge ASK yourself: Did West Virginians abruptly become more criminal in the past decade? Of course not. Mountain State people always have had a low crime rate, indicating innate decency. Then why did the number of West Virginians locked in state cells more than double, from 2,392 to 5,032? Why did the state's incarceration growth rate hit 9.3 percent in 2001, the highest in America? Why did West Virginia spend more than $100 million on new prisons in the past decade? Why did the Corrections Division budget soar 140 percent from 1992 to 2002, in inflation-adjusted dollars, while higher education spending rose only 23 percent? [continues 116 words]
Editor: Who pays the price for alcohol and drug offenders? Answer: Our families and the taxpayers. Don't get me wrong; jail is no walk in the park. But wouldn't it be more of a punishment to us to be sentenced to a rehabilitation facility and made to pay fines, than to sit in a regional jail? Regional jails don't offer rehab, and being an addict, rehabilitation is what we need. Speaking for myself, it would be more of a correction going to a rehab and paying fines for my crime than to sit here waiting for a space to open up in prison. It's not the taxpayers' fault, and it's not my family's fault, so why make them pay for my mistake? Nelvin Moreland Southern Regional Jail [end]
METHAMPHETAMINE trafficking and abuse is on the increase in Kanawha County. As a result, this drug is having a devastating impact on communities throughout the county. Meth is clandestinely manufactured, using the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine reduction method. In this process, over-the-counter cold and allergy tablets are placed in a solution of water, alcohol or other solvent for several hours until their ephedrine or pseudoephedrine separates. Then, using common household products and equipment and a recipe learned from other cooks or taken off the Internet, the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine is converted into high-quality methamphetamine in makeshift, illegal labs by untrained individuals. [continues 439 words]
Late one October evening in 2003, the State Police raided Charlie McMillion's Wyoming County home and found more than a dozen painkillers the unemployed 54-year-old was not supposed to have. So McMillion spilled his guts, a transcript of his State Police interview shows. He told Trooper Jason Davis that he drove to Virginia "probably two times a month" to buy OxyContin pills from a dealer. He said he sold dozens of them every month at a price of $50 for a 40 milligram pill, but never made a profit because he snorted up five or six pills a day. [continues 1627 words]
Editor: I am concerned about the legal system in West Virginia, state and federal. I saw on the local news where a man named Brian Coster killed a woman while he was driving drunk and only received one year in the regional jail - only one year for killing a woman while he was drunk driving. This is blowing my mind. I see 18-year-old kids getting ready to go to prison for five to seven years for first-time drug offenses. I would like to see the Gazette address the issue. It seems like the justice system in West Virginia can be bought and sold. Just a little bit of money can make it OK to kill someone while non-violent crimes warrant more prison time. I'm just a concerned citizen who knows the prison system is full of drug dealers while the murderers are sitting at home. Michael James, Cross Lanes [end]
Martha Stewart thinks of others who will be serving time in the nation's prisons after she leaves her cell in Alderson and returns to the billion-dollar homemaking empire she built. She has joined the move for sentencing reform, a move that includes everyday citizens, lawyers, judges and all. They oppose mandatory sentencing for nonviolent crimes by first offenders and the appalling results of the punitive philosophy that says, "Lock 'em up and throw away the key." Martha Stewart knows the results that she sees among women inmates at Alderson who are "devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family." She's aware of such plight for male and female inmates in burgeoning prisons across the country. [continues 471 words]
Case Provides Interesting Questions On States' Rights In Ashcroft v. Raich, the Supreme Court will decide a lawsuit brought by a pair of very sick California women, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. Both grow an unusual medicine in their back yards: marijuana. Under California law, the drug is legal under doctor's orders. Even so, the Department of Justice says federal agents can prosecute both women. To preserve their access to needed medicine, Raich and Monson challenged the U.S. attorney general in court. Their basis for doing so was the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which says government can regulate "interstate" commerce. According to Raich and Monson, their drug is grown at home for personal consumption. It's lawful under California law. And it's not sold to people outside the state. So they argue it's not "interstate" commerce that the federal government can regulate. [continues 568 words]
West Virginia has the fastest growing prison population in the southern United States, according to a new report by the Southern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments. Still, no other Southern state has fewer prisoners than West Virginia, both in per capita and absolute numbers. Between 1994 and 2004, the number of inmates in West Virginia's prisons doubled, from 1,962 inmates to 3,942 - twice as fast an increase as other Southern states, according to the report. [continues 317 words]
WINFIELD - When Kent and Susan Smith decided it was time to fight back against the youth drug problems in Putnam County, they thought about the future of their adopted 3-year-old daughter. They said they worried about what kind of school environment she will face as she grows up. So they put out a call to other concerned parents. At a community meeting Thursday night, Kent Smith said he is afraid the county's drug problem is just getting worse. [continues 423 words]
Purdue Pharma To Pay State $10 Million Drugmaker Perdue Pharma has agreed to give the West Virginia Attorney General's office $10 million to end a lawsuit accusing the company of dishonestly marketing the painkiller OxyContin. The money will finance doctor continuing-education programs, law enforcement drug-prevention programs and community drug-rehabilitation programs, according to the Attorney General's office. A McDowell County circuit judge approved the settlement Thursday before jury selection was scheduled to begin, Managing Deputy Attorney General Will Steele said Friday. [continues 240 words]
WELCH - Today, lawyers working for the state and a massive drug maker will begin picking the jurors who may determine the future of the painkiller OxyContin in West Virginia. The state's lawyers come to McDowell County's old stone courthouse seeking tens of millions of dollars they say OxyContin's maker, Purdue Pharma, owes West Virginia for dishonestly marketing the pain pill. When the trial begins, the state's lawyers plan to tell jurors that the company kept doctors, pharmacists and patients in the dark about the morphinelike drug's addictive qualities because it wanted to sell more pills, according to court filings and hearing transcripts. [continues 530 words]
Democrats Will Add Police Funding, Aid Drug Lab Eradication, Candidate Says Calling methamphetamine a "cancer on rural America," Sen. John Edwards said Monday that a plan by the Kerry campaign would put more money into helping treat users and battling the homemade drug epidemic. "Thousands of lives are being ruined by this drug," Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said in a conference call with reporters. Edwards, who was campaigning in Iowa on Monday, accused President Bush of letting up on the drug problem since he took office in 2000. He said Bush's cuts to police programs include a 63 percent reduction in efforts to crack down on methamphetamine "hot spots." [continues 381 words]
