Pharmacists, investigators and substance abuse counselors agree that the county’s prescription drug addiction is getting worse

Law enforcement officers and substance abuse counselors have long worried about the rise in prescription drug abuse, but new data collected by one former Tooele cop shows the problem may be far worse than anyone estimated.

Last year, retired Tooele City police officer Bob Main was hired by Valley Mental Health to compile statistics on drugs prescribed by local pharmacies.

What he found shocked him.

In the first six months of 2008, five out of seven pharmacies in Tooele County reported they had dispensed more than 1.2 million pills of Schedule II through V prescription drugs, according to Main’s research. These are classes of drugs with legitimate medical uses but also considered by the federal government to have a potential for abuse and dependency. Of these, Schedule II drugs are the most potent and include narcotics, while schedule V drugs are less potent and include products such as cough suppressants containing codeine.

By the first six months of 2009, the total number of Schedule II through V pills prescribed by those same five pharmacies skyrocketed by 45 percent over the previous year to 1.8 million, according to Main.

That’s 31 prescription pills for every man, woman and child in Tooele County over a six-month period.

“That is a lot higher than I thought it would be,” said Main. “There are a lot of prescription drugs floating around our community and that makes the potential for abuse greater because of the availability of these drugs.”

The most frequently prescribed Schedule II drug in the county is the painkiller oxycontin, known by brand names such as Oxycontin and Percocet. The No. 1 Schedule III drug is the pain killer hyrdrocodone, the active ingredient in Lortab and Vicodin.

“I don’t know of any reason why our use of these drugs would be higher in Tooele then any other place,” Main said. “We have good doctors and dentists here, and I don’t believe any of them are intentionally overwriting prescriptions.”

Sheldon Birch, a pharmacist and owner of Birch Family Pharmacy in Tooele, is at loss to explain why the prescription rate in Tooele appears to be so high, but worries about stories of abuse he’s heard.

“I have heard of teenagers holding ‘pharm parties,’” Birch said. “They raid their parents or grandparents medicine cabinet for a bottle of pills and take them to a party where they get dumped into a bowl with other pills and passed around.”

Birch has already been robbed twice since he opened his pharmacy in November 2007. Both times, the thieves were looking for prescription painkillers.

And there’s other evidence that countywide abuse of prescription drugs is growing.

In 2001, there were 11.3 visits per 100,000 people to the emergency room in Tooele County due to prescription drug overdoses. By 2006, that number had increased to 42.3 per 100,000, according to the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health.

Andy Free, a Tooele resident and an investigator for the Utah State Department of Professional Licensing, the agency that licenses and regulates health professionals, said his caseload for Tooele County has significantly increased in the last few years.

“While I can’t get into specific cases for confidentiality reasons, I can say that my case load for investigating ‘doctor shopping’ and other violations for prescription drugs in Tooele has increased,” Free said.

Doctor shopping, according to Free, is when an individual goes to multiple physicians seeking a prescription without disclosing that they have already received a prescription from another physician.

Free has access to the state’s confidential controlled prescription substance database, which he uses in his investigations to identify both prescribers and users that may be abusing the prescription system.

Main believes many prescription pills end up on the black market.

“A lot of people don’t use all of their prescribed drugs and they leave them at their home,” Main said. “Teenage family members or other friends can access those drugs and either use them for themselves or sell them. These drugs have a very high street value.”

One pill can sell for as much as $80 on the street, according to Main.

Prescription drug abuse has become a statewide epidemic. In 2003, overdoses from prescription drugs replaced motor vehicles as the leading cause of accidental death in Utah. And legal drugs are a bigger problem than illegal drugs. In 2007, there were 467 drug overdose deaths in the state. Of those, 317 were attributable to legal drugs — mainly prescription painkillers — like oxycodone, hyrdrocodone, and methadone, according to the Utah Department of Health. In 2008 there was a 12 percent dip in prescription drug deaths from 2007.

“It would be great to think this decrease was a result of our efforts,” said Main. “However, statewide 277 people died from prescription drug overdose and it is still the number one cause of accidental death in the state. To solve this problem we will need a collaborative effort of the entire community, including law enforcement, medical professionals, and community leaders as well as citizens. Everybody can play a role in making our community a safer place.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com