OxyContina scourge for users in rural areas

“Oxy,” “Hillbilly-heroin” and “Killer” are a few of the street names for the prescription pain pill OxyContin, which about five years ago gained prominence among rural teens who discovered they could get a powerful morphinelike high by crushing and snorting the drug.

Since then, abuse of OxyContin has spread, killing hundreds and prompting an aggressive response by federal law-enforcement agencies, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Only one local police department in the country has created its own task force to battle illegal use of the drug. Fairfax County has fought OxyContin since April last year, after a rash of robberies at pharmacies, police spokeswoman Lt. Amy Lubas said.

“Unlike with crack or other drugs, we were seeing entire families involved,” she said, explaining why the county keeps two full-time officers designated to working undercover along the underbelly of the OxyContin problem.

“Word on the street is that Fairfax County is ‘hot’ — you don’t want to do business there,” said one of the undercover officers, who met on the condition of anonymity with a reporter from The Washington Times.

The officer, “deputized” by the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives so he can rove easily across county and state borders, has worked with federal and local police as far away as the hills of Tennessee to battle OxyContin.

He has been at the center of the fight in Virginia, the scope and intensity of which became clear in late June when federal prosecutors in Alexandria revealed elements of an ongoing probe of pharmacists, doctors and abusers.

Court papers indicate that 49 illegal dealers have been charged in Alexandria. Prosecutors said the bulk were arrested in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, where corrupt doctors rubber-stamped prescriptions for large quantities to people who sold pills on the black market for profit.

Last week alone in federal court in Alexandria, 10 of those arrested were sentenced, six pleaded guilty and one was on trial. The cases are the result of an integrated federal and local effort called Operation Cotton Candy.

Those sentenced are likely to serve between two and four years in prison, depending on how much OxyContin they have sold.

“This is an ongoing case with lots of activity,” said U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty.

“OxyContin has been a highly destructive controlled substance that has had a devastating impact in much of America, particularly in the western Virginia and Appalachian region,” he said.

“We have to be extremely aggressive in our prosecution. It’s a substance that is in great demand because it’s so addictive, and there’s a significant amount of money in it for traffickers, and that’s why we’ve had so many cases.”

Profit vs. risk

Story Continues →