PRINCETON -- As the nation's "Drug Czar" tours West Virginia today, local officials hope he will be persuaded to include Mercer County in a regional federal organization devoted to fighting drug crimes. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy will be visiting areas of southern West Virginia today. A letter written by U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., sent to Kerlikowske, asked to include Mercer County in the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) as well as for resources to help Mercer County law enforcement combat drug trafficking and prescription drug abuse. [continues 805 words]
WELCH - While it would have most likely lasted a lot longer if it was torched in the illegal manner, it still took West Virginia state troopers almost an entire shift to destroy more that $21 million worth of pot seized during two days of marijuana eradication raids earlier this week. "We started burning the marijuana at 5 p.m. (Thursday evening), and we were done at midnight," Sgt. W.C. Tupper, co-commander of the Welch Detachment said. "It was so heavy and green that we had to keep turning it in order to destroy all of it." [continues 57 words]
BASTIAN, Va. - About a decade ago, the Bland County Board of Supervisors came up with a clever slogan in an attempt to market the county, calling Bland "the light at the end of two tunnels. In recent years, that light has been shrouded to some extent by the "rampant" abuse of prescription drugs among the county's youth. Although drug abuse constitutes a major problem in both rural and urban parts of the country, somehow its hard for most people to fathom that Bland County, one of Virginia's most rural locations with a population of about 6,600 souls, has a drug problem. [continues 887 words]
Bluefield - When the public witnesses suspicious activity that they believe to be illegal drug trade, they sometimes express their frustration with law enforcement officers for not busting down the door of the suspected drug pusher, and hauling them off to prison. "It's never that easy," Detective Lt. Tom Helton of the Bluefield Police Department said. "One guy took four years to get a conviction. There are rare occasions when an officer can arrest a suspect with a quantity of drugs during a traffic stop. We had one like that. But most of the time, it takes a year or two before we can get a drug conviction." [continues 1163 words]
ATHENS - Appalachian Teen Challenge is waging a war against drug and alcohol abuse every day, but the emphasis is on preparing young men for a life after addiction. "We're addressing the real root problem here," Jim Nickels, director of the Teen Challenge center near Athens said. "We're trying to reach the whole man." Nickels said that young men are students in the Appalachian Teen Challenge program for a year and that studies reveal that 70-80 percent of the individuals who complete the Teen Challenge program remain drug-free for at least seven years after completion. [continues 315 words]
ABINGDON, Va. -- A Buchanan County physician who was found guilty of illegally dispensing prescriptions for powerful pain medication was sentenced in an emotionally-charged courtroom at U.S. District Court in Abingdon Thursday morning. About 30 supporters of Dr. Franklin J. Sutherland took seats in the gallery, as U.S. District Judge James P. Jones, of the Western District of Virginia, sentenced Sutherland on his May 25 conviction on 427 counts of illegally prescribing Schedule II and Schedule III narcotics. Sutherland's attorney, Tom Dillard, filed a motion asking the court for a significant downward departure in the physician's sentence due to "diminished capacity" associated with a head injury Sutherland received in a fall when he was a 6-month-old infant. Dillard based his motion on a letter written by Holston, Tenn., psychologist Dr. Timothy Urbin who reportedly said that Sutherland, 47, suffered brain damage as a result of the injury. [continues 541 words]
BLUEFIELD - Plaintiffs in a federal law suit against the manufacturer of a powerful painkiller want the case moved back into the state courts and federal authorities are going to take a closer look at the records of the state's top retail purchaser of Oxycontin. Sharon Faye Baker and Chastity Cassidy, plaintiffs in a suit against Purdue Pharma, L.P., and other companies associated with the manufacture, marketing and sales of Oxycontin filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Bluefield seeking to "remand" the case back into the state system in the McDowell Circuit Court where the suit was first brought. [continues 374 words]
