Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express”

I just lost a friend to this pill.

It's sad that although it's prescribed by a doctor and not at all safe to use recreationally, that people still view it as a safer alternative to the harder drugs.

Big Pharma is proof that American consumerism will feed on anything, and that, in great quantities.

WV cracked down, now Heroin is re-emerging. Kratom is a tree bark extract that was used in south asia to break opiate addictions but just like the US, the politicians fold to drug makers and drug lords to keep this product from interfereing with their addicted customers. Pfizer, and GSK are the real drug lords and your elected officials ae their enforcers, a pharmacy on every corner.

This is particularly insidious in that it is based on a 'regulated' industry

I've always personally thought the color scheme of the pills almost seemed to designer. Almost appealing and recognizable and yet not a common color.

I live in eastern ky, Most of eastern ky is a dry area. which means you cannot buy alchol and take it home. You can pay 3 bucks a beer at a restauant. I call it legal bootlegging. This place is full of hyprocy. It is easier to get illegal drugs than it is alchol. Most of my peers seem to have a pill problem here.

and WTF are they doing about it in Florida? I've been through Eastern Kentucky, some of the poorest of the poor live there, so of course they're a lot easier to bust than the slimeball doctors and underwriters in Florida who represent the supply end of this chain of death.

Why is it that drug busts always seem to be capable of criminalizing the victims while ignoring the suppliers? I just don't get it. So what, let's round up all the Oxi addicts in Eastern Kentucky and use them as guinea pigs to test out the Federal government's latest round of drugs for drug addicts? There is a reason why "Kentucky leads the nation in prescription drug abuse and has become a hot market for pills from Florida." It's called poverty. Did it ever occur to the Federal government to do something about that?

While I do not agree with Alex Jones sensationalizing of the Federal government's latest initiative to address addiction, there are several programs underway, and it wouldn't surprise me at all for them to invite the people they've arrested to a plea bargain that includes mandatory guinea pig status.

WTF are they doing about the legal pushers in Florida?

I don't live in Kentucky but I can tell you how it is affecting people on the Texas Gulf Coast. It's killing them left and right. The ones that are strung out and don't O.D. are stealing whatever they can to get the dope. I know three or four people that sell there meds that the goverment is paying for one way or another. I see from the very young to the very old getting strung out. I think every day that could be me out there all it would take is to get hooked on the latest fad drug. I think I will leave this one alone. Ya'll can have my share.

Fantastic to hear that there are still people out there fighting the tough battles. What is difficult to grasp (as the Vanguard episode sharply illuminates) is how easily the distribution of these pills achieve legality under the guise of a 'Pain Management' clinic. The part at the beginning of the episode where the mother shows us the bags of M&M's representing the number of pills her son was able to get in 2 months time is particularly impactful. The fact that all you need to qualify for a perscription is, at best, a meager MRI report speaks volumes about the larger issues in play. I only hope guys like Keith Cooper keep doing what they do and never give up.

Well i live in Greenup, and I always knew oxycontin was bad in the area, but I didn't realize it was this bad. But what was really cool was in all English classes students were required to watch the whole episode to raise the awareness of the problem and show how serious it was.

growdude420; you are in the trenches or have pulled free. you see a side of america that most will deny. i lost 1 sister to herion o.d. and another to liver failure from alcohol and pain killers. 2 of my sisters are pill heads and 1 is clean and sober for 6 years. i have 4 years after losing 16 years of sobriety. when i got loaded it took 12 years to get clean again and i tried and tried. i knew it all and it didn't help, it made it worse.
you mention suboxone, i think maybe if it had been available a few years earlier my sisters would still live. i have worked hard to get suboxone for some of the guys trying to keep off of heroin. the few doctors allowed to perscribe it are limited to 12 patients, sometimes have to go out of the county or buy from the street. the bitch is you can't stop taking suboxone without the withdrawls. i have become allergic to opiods which is funny cause i wouldn't take them for pain.

I estimate that about one in five Americans take some kind of opioid regularly. Even worse, over 99% take opioids at least once in their lives. Of the 20% that take them on a reg. basis, half or more are addicts. One in twenty opiate addicts are able to get clean without NRT (Narcotic Replacement Therapy, ie methadone, suboxone etc.). One in five long-term addicts die via overdose, and another one in five dies from HIV, hepatitis, or other addiction related disease.
I attend a methadone clinic, and in less than one year five of my peers have died. The clinic treats around 180 patients.
The problems are exacerbated by relapse during treatment with an antagonist (methadone, suboxone,naloxone, naltrexone, talwin, LAAM, are all either partial or full antagonists, meaning opioid effects are blocked, making all opioids ineffective at normal doseage.). Patients must massively increase dosage to get the desired effects, making overdose much easier.
The other side of this argument, of course, is that these drugs are wholly necessary in the treatment of pain, and are unequaled in their ability to do so. So where do we draw thee line? Doctors bear the brunt of this responsibility, and the Hypocratic oath gives ambiguous definitions of the doctor's role in treatment of pain, and more so, addiction. Doctors have killed patients trying to treat intractable pain, always with good intentions. They have killed addicts trying to comfort their withrawl. In any case, the doctor has a responsibility to treat the patient with empathetic resolve.
The bottom line? There is no solution to this problem, short of denying everyone the right to die without suffering, and that IS our right, truly a gift from God.
I think addiction is a crucial part of the human condition, and we will never be rid of it. We would do better to try and reduce the harm that is done. The "harm reduction" discipline has proven over and over to be the best approach to saving lives, and quelling addiction.
"God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom tho know the difference."

back in the day; that's how we smoked brown heroin and opium, i didn't know you could smoke pills. a big one here in so. cal. is fentenol patches, cut em open and suck em dry. at the local a.a. club, a lot of young men and women hang out to kill time, to stay away from the hustle during the day until the homeless shelter opens up. i talk to some that are desperate to stay clean one day and are wasted the next. this month we lost 5 to a overly strong batch of heroin from mexico.
our stats. are; if your clean for a year, your chance of dieing sober are 3%.

The source of the problem is the factories who make the pills and the doctors who hand out the prescriptions. We can go even further and say the source is afghanistan, where 3/4 's of the worlds opium is produced. Since we already have a military pressence in afghganistan that seems to have boosted opium production, the answer has to be in regulating/limiting production and distribution of this dangerous drug. If left unregulated it has the potential to bring our country to its knees just as it did china in the early 1800s.

I've heard about this problem in Kentucky a long while ago, it even has a cheesy nickname... Good for these guys, hope they get to the source, too. Too bad something that is made to treat pain is so abused, makes it hard for the true pain sufferers to be treated adequately.

The people in Florida should be the ones doing something about it. That's where the source of the problem is. Kentucky shouldn't have to do all the work.

I can tell you how much its used in the army...

If anyone out there is in Kentucky and can let us know how their community is affected we'll include it in our ongoing coverage.