13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |DEA data: OxyContin sales soared in southern Indiana from '97 to '05

DEA data: OxyContin sales soared in southern Indiana from '97 to '05

Indianapolis - Indiana residents coping with chronic pain - or those simply looking for a high - fueled a dramatic surge in retail sales of pain killers such as OxyContin between 1997 and 2005, particularly in the far southern portion of the state, federal data show.

Sales of OxyContin - a widely abused painkiller that delivers a heroin-like high - rose 584 percent across the state during that nine-year period, according to an Associated Press analysis of statistics from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Yet southern Indiana's Clark, Crawford, Floyd, Harrison, Scott and Washington counties saw a far larger increase, with sales of OxyContin rising from 1,234 percent in that region across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky., records show.

In the six counties, sales of the drug soared from 2,575 grams in 1997 to 34,351 in 2005. Some of the rise in sales of OxyContin and other painkillers such as codeine and morphine can be explained by an aging population and changing attitudes about drugs to ease pain.

But officials said relentless marketing by pharmaceutical companies also played a role.

Bob Amick, coordinator of the Southern Indiana Drug Task Force, said pharmaceutical company representatives began making frequent trips to the area in the late 1990s to promote new pain killers - including OxyContin.

Some patients prescribed the drug for persistent pain became addicted to it, while others received it from friends or purchased it illegally on the street, he said.

Before long, a growing number of southern Indiana residents were traveling "by the van load" to pain clinics and doctors in the Louisville area, Amick said, getting prescriptions for OxyContin and then getting them filled at pharmacies in Indiana or Kentucky.

"They'd go a van load at a time to pain clinics with doctors who are less than diligent in their record-keeping," he said. "They'd say, 'Doctor, I've got a terrible pain right up my back, and I've tried other things and the only thing that helps me is OxyContin."'

After persuading a doctor to write them a prescription, Amick said OxyContin addicts typically have them filled at a different pharmacy each time to avoid attracting attention.

Nationwide, the percentage of people using OxyContin and the four other major painkillers soared 88 percent between 1997 and 2005, according to The AP analysis. Indiana's prescriptions for those five categories rose 65 percent, ranking it 42nd overall in the nation.

Oxycodone, the chemical used in Oxycontin, was responsible for most of the increase.

Dennis Wichern, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's Indianapolis office, said many addicts have crossed into Indiana from Kentucky or Ohio to get prescriptions filled. Indiana residents, in turn, have visited those two states with the same goal of trying to elude different prescription-monitoring systems.

"We call them doctor shoppers, people who go from doctor to doctor until they find someone to write them a prescription," Wichern said.

The same six southern Indiana counties with the dramatic increase in OxyContin sales also had one of the state's biggest regional increases in sales of hydrocodone - a generic form of Vicodin - the DEA data analysis showed. Their generic Vicodin sales rose 195 percent.

Statewide, hydrocodone sales grew 149 percent over the time period, growing from 287,238 grams sold in 1997 to 716,392 grams in 2005.

Wichern said a 2006 report by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that prescription drugs are now the top cause of drug overdoses that lead to emergency room visits, topping even cocaine.

The rising tide of prescription painkiller abuse among the young and old has been felt in the region's mental health and drug-treatment clinics, officials said.

Since the late 1990s, there's been a gradual increase in the number of patients being treated for addictions to OxyContin and other painkillers at Lifespring Mental Health Services in Jeffersonville, said Dr. Terry Stawar, the clinic's president and CEO.

He said the surge has prompted the clinic to add more detox-related services over the last five years for opiates, which have a sedative effect on the body.

The rise in admissions of people with painkiller addictions has been accompanied by growing crime in the region committed by people who steal or rob to support their habits, Stawar said.

"There's kind of a community-wide impact that stems from it and confuses the issue for a lot of folks about taking painkillers because of all the publicity about addictions," he said.

(Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)