RFP Staff
♦ “Chasing the dragon” or smoking heroin or OxyCotin (called hillbilly heroin) has grown in popularity among teens and adults. Prescription abuse of opioid pain medications such as OxyContin has reached epidemic proportions throughout our county.
Word is out that prescription pain medication abuse hit our public school system hard. The popular method of ingestion is called “Chasing the Dragon,” a process in which addicts cut the pills into quarters, crush them, place them on aluminum, light the powder from underneath until the pill dust turns into a white smoke. Then a long inhalation of the smoke through a straw, giving its abusers a quick and intense ‘high’ similar to heroin.
The “Dragon-chasers,” rationalize that smoking the pills is a safer than swallowing them. What they fail to realize is that “Chasing the Dragon” can lead to slow death via toxic spongiform leukoencephalopathy. “Dragon Chasing” also turns on further drug-seeking behaviors, due to the tolerance-building.
On a recent edition of “A Week In Politics”, one of our questions dealt with the growing problem of over-prescribing of opioids and the heroin epidemic. One of the show’s panelists insisted the two problems were completely unconnected. But after the program, another panelist explained that once an addict starts crushing and smoking the pills, the only logical next step is for such an abuser to get higher is black tar heroin common in our area.
Locally and nationwide, physicians and physician assistants are prescribing narcotic painkillers to most patients who complain of severe pain. The thoughts of many “scrip doctors” (as they’re called on the streets) is that it’s a basic ‘right’ for their patients to live a pain-free life. What doctors won’t tell you, according to law enforcement professionals, is that each doctor has the ability to check on a computer system to see what opioids their patients are already taking prescribed by other doctors. Some doctors claim to be ‘too busy’ to check the system. Pharmacists may also check the system—a practice that irritates doctors who receive phone calls from pharmacists suspecting drug abuse when patients stagger into the pharmacy for pain meds, then stagger out to their cars and get behind the wheel. Some doctors wish the pharmacists would just mind their own business. Others claim they’re giving scrips to patients suffering with pain, in order to avoid malpractice liability. And some even claim they’re “safe” as long as they rely on what a patient tells them about the pain and they document it in their notes; that they’re not responsible for the way their patients use or abuse the medications they prescribe. Whether their patients “chase the dragon”, or just suck on that oxycodone pill until they’re high, once they leave the doctor’s office, so goes the thought process, the doctor is no longer responsible.
Those same doctors wouldn’t dream of a two-minute computer look-up before writing the opioid scrips, until one day when the SBI or DEA come pounding on their doors. Then all the excuses go up like OxyCotin smoke and the reality of being an accused drug dealer sinks in. Grand jury indictments, subpoenas for patients, and in some cases, patients who never knew they’d been prescribed those medications, can be real career ender, especially in a small town. A case occurred locally years back, where a medical professional was prescribing opioids in exchange for young women to render sexual favors.
Some doctors are enabling the prescription drug epidemic in our county. They’re enabling the inevitable ‘next-step’ abuses of heroin. And some doctors are responsible for the cycle of addiction leading up to numerous deaths attributable to abuse of prescribed drugs. Until law enforcement makes an example out of a few more doctors, and physician assistants, the same tired responses get repeated. Families being affected by this epidemic are fed up.
