The possession and distribution of illegal drugs is on the rise in Tooele County, according to Mike Hansen, commander of the Tooele County Drug Task Force.

“The task force has been very busy this past year and in the last couple of years,” said task force commander Mike Hansen. “It’s not only us, but the entire state that is dealing with more and more drug crimes.”

Local problem drugs include marijuana, Ecstasy, cocaine and psilocybin mushrooms — with the most problematic drug being prescription pain killers.

“Opioid-based drugs are the most popular kind of drug right now,” Hansen said. “And it’s these types of cases that are the most difficult to investigate. We are almost completely maxed out in terms of man power trying to investigate them.”

If an officer stops a person on the street with meth or heroin, the individual can immediately be arrested, Hansen said, but conversely, if an officer stops someone with a bottle of OxyContin or Lortab, an arrest cannot be made.

Recovering evidence that someone is in fact abusing the medications or distributing them illegally is very labor-intensive, Hansen said. It requires a lot of surveillance and usually the help of confidential informants who do controlled buys from a suspect.

“Drug-related crimes in general tend to be very secretive,” Hansen said. “It’s not like an assault or a robbery, where crime happens and the investigation immediately starts. We have to be really patient.”

The problem is fueled by not only the addictive nature of the medications, but the perspective of those who use them.

“If the drugs are legal, people don’t see themselves as criminal,” Hansen said.

The face of the prescription drug abuser is also changing, Hansen said, which adds to the difficulty in investigating. Most prescription drug abusers are middle-class housewives.

This type of abuse often starts with someone obtaining a legitimate prescription and then slowly diverting from recommended doses or continuing to take the medication after their pain subsides. Then addiction starts to take hold and many start “doctor shopping,” or filling prescriptions at multiple pharmacies, or using other illegal methods to acquire the drug.

Hansen said these types of people are hard to catch, but the task force tracks them down by pulling reports from the controlled substance database and looking for red flags, and by investigating leads from doctors, pharmacists, and family and friends of suspected abusers.

Birch Family Pharmacy owner Sheldon Birch said the word “prescription” in general seems to factor into the reason why some people rationalize the abuse of such drugs.

“The fact that they have a prescription seems to lend some legitimacy to it,” Birch said. “Prescription drugs are coming from high-quality manufacturing facilities, so you have highly standardized recipes being used, which create a very standardized effect. With prescription medications you can get a euphoria similar to that of illegal drugs, but with less variability in the other effects. That makes them very attractive, but also makes them very hard to come off of.”

Addiction to prescription medications can often lead to addiction to illegal drugs, Hansen said, because the cost of the latter is often significantly less.

“That’s what happened to a district court judge in Provo. A hunting partner gave him pills that he got addicted to and then he got addicted to heroine,” Hansen said. “OxyContin can go for $80 a pill, but you can buy a half gram of heroine for $10.”

Marijuana has been the drug of choice among juveniles for a number of years now, however, Hansen said that trend appears to be growing as well. Meth and Ecstasy come in a close second and third.

“These are the types of drugs that are the most easily accessible to teens,” Hansen said.

John Burn, assistant program director for Valley Mental Health, said marijuana is a gateway drug that leads users to try harder drugs.

“They expose themselves to something that alters them in a way, and over time they like the altered state and find new ways to be altered,” Burn said.

Burn agrees with Hansen, however, saying the biggest new trend the valley is seeing right now is an increase in prescription drug abuse.

Notable drug busts in the county last year included the January arrest of six adults following a search of a residence that revealed one half-pound of high-grade marijuana — that carried a $5,000 street value — Ecstasy pills, prescription pills, a handgun, an assault rifle and two swords.

Cocaine and methamphetamine were the drugs of choice in another January bust, which resulted in the arrest of two adult males. Agents recovered $9,500 cash, six ounces of meth and one and a half pounds of cocaine. The meth carried a street value of $7,800 and the cocaine was valued at $19,200.

In June, a drug task force agent assisted a Utah Highway Patrol trooper with a marijuana seizure from a motorist on I-80. Just under 23 pounds of high-grade marijuana was confiscated, which carried a street value of $170,000.

In August, task force agents took down a marijuana cultivation operation in the mountains of Skull Valley, where they found 18 large marijuana plants. The arrest of the suspect is still pending following fingerprint evidence processing, but agents have valued the plants at $72,000 (street value).

A 24-year-old West Valley woman was arrested in April after a physician’s assistant at the University of Utah Health Center in Stansbury Park reported to police that a prescription pain reliever that the woman had acquired through the health center had been filled at six different pharmacies in the Salt Lake area. The woman, a former medical assistant at the health center, had faxed the prescription to the pharmacies from the health center.

This case was one of 21 “doctor shopping cases” that the drug task force actively investigated in 2008 and turned over to the Tooele County Attorney’s Office for prosecution. Each case referred carried an average of 10 felony charges.

“Doctor shopping is patients going around to new doctors until they get what they want,” Birch said. “Doctors don’t realize this until enough red flags go up. Some patients shop for doctors like they shop for a pair of shoes. In addition to that, some will take a prescription to any number of pharmacies.”

Burn said the state has a database that pharmacists, prescribers and law enforcement officials can request information from if they detect any red flags when filling a prescription. The problem is, using the database can be time-consuming, so if red flags aren’t presented transactions will often be handled as usual. Hansen said the database is usually 30 to 60 days out and doesn’t show really recent information regarding controlled substance prescriptions issued, making it doubly difficult for pharmacists.

In recent years, Tooele City Police Chief Ron Kirby said he has noticed more and more blood draws from drivers involved in traffic accidents or situations of erratic driving come back positive for prescription medications, which he said is contributing to the county’s DUI problem.

Additionally, Tooele County Attorney Doug Hogan said drug cases are the most prevalent case his office handles, and can often be linked to other crimes.

“I think the number of financial crimes and forgeries we have in the county stays fairly strong across the board because of drug crimes,” Hogan said. “They are stealing and committing these crimes to get the money to buy drugs.”

Hansen said combating drug crimes is a never-ending task, but with the skilled investigators he has on his team from the Tooele City Police Department, Grantsville Police Department, Tooele County Sheriff’s Office, Utah Highway Patrol and Adult Probation and Parole they are certainly making a dent.

“Since we started the task force [back in 2002] the communication between the agencies has improved at least 200 percent,” Hansen said.

Birch said the best way to stop the epidemic of prescription drug abuse is for pharmacists to really know who their patients are.

“The better we know our patients the better we are able to help them,” Birch said.

Jamie Belnap: jamieb@tooeletranscript.com