Ron A., 57, a resident of the Easy Does It addictions treatment center in Bern Township, was a heroin addict for years. "Then one day I learned I could get the same high from prescription drugs and they were a lot easier to get," said Ron, who said he raided the medicine cabinets of friends and family and started going to doctors and dentists with made-up maladies, asking for pain medicine.

"They gave me Oxycontin and Dilaudid and other pain medications," he said. "It got to the point I was taking so many pills they didn’t even work anymore."

Dan Kelly of the Reading Eagle writes that Dr. Charles F. Barbera, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Reading Hospital, said doctors are continually evaluating patients for pain in the emergency room.

"We have a system here that identifies people who we feel may have some dependence on prescription drugs, and we try to offer them ways through our social services department to regulate prescription drug usage," Barbera said. "That usually involves consultation with the family doctor and designating one person to authorize prescription drug usage in at-risk patients.”

"We see people misuse prescription drugs that they have for valid medical reasons, and we also see people that utilize prescription drugs and maybe come to us and several other hospitals seeking prescription drugs,” he continued.

In addition to doctor shopping, addicts now can order prescription painkillers on the Internet without a prescription.

"It’s an ongoing battle: prescription drug abuse and what we call prescription drug diversion, which is when people get legal prescription drugs and divert them for illegal purposes," Frederiksen said, adding that prescription fraud, or forgery, sometimes involves medical professionals diverting the drugs for themselves or others.

In addition, the state attorney general obtained a $5 million civil judgment against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, saying the company downplayed the addictive nature of the drug and marketed it to physicians as a replacement for other nonaddictive painkillers.

"That was a recipe for addiction," Frederiksen said. "There have been changes, but we continue to work with other attorneys general because the problem with OxyContin started up and down the Appalachian Mountains," he said. "In some states it was referred to as ‘hillbilly heroin.’"

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a study of patient deaths between 1999 and 2007 showed an 83 percent increase in accidental overdose deaths due to prescription painkillers.

A companion study by the Canadian Medical Association found that the numbers of accidental prescription drug deaths in Canada increased by 500 percent since 1991.

In nearly every case, the teens started by popping prescription pain pills, KMBC’s Martin Augustine reported.

Brett Hayes was one of the teens who died from a heroin overdose. Brett’s father, Dorman Hayes, said that Brett was a talented wrestler, a loyal friend, and a loving son. He began abusing prescription pain pills after graduating from Blue Valley Northwest High School.

"He cared, I think, more about other people than maybe he cared about himself," mother Debbie Hayes said.

Brett’s parents said they aren’t sure how his drug habit started, but they got him into a drug rehabilitation program that temporarily cleaned him up. Then, on Nov. 6, 2008, Brett bought a $10 hit of heroin. His parents were at work and couldn’t get in touch with Brett all day.

"I felt like something was wrong," Debbie Hayes said, as it was unusual for Brett to not return their phone calls.

Later that day, Brett’s parents found his body in his room—he had been injecting heroin while sitting in a chair against his bathroom sink.

"You know, there was the syringe, the stuff," Dorman Hayes said. "He was just kind of leaned over, like he’d (gone) to sleep…We’ll never know what triggered him to do it.”

Police said that heroin was long thought to be a big city problem, but now it’s become a problem in the suburbs. Narcotics officers said many teens start turning to heroin because pills are expensive but heroin isn’t.

Brett’s parents said they hope their son’s heroin overdose can be an example to warn other families.
"There has to be something good out of Brett’s death." Debbie Hayes said. "If we can help other parents, if we can help another kid not lose his life, then that’s what we’re going to do."

Debbie Hayes said parents should ask a lot of direct questions of their children, especially if they’re good students and their grades suddenly go bad, or if their old friends aren’t around anymore. Find out what’s going on, even if it’s embarrassing.

"If you could figure out where everything went wrong, then we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. And other parents wouldn’t be in the situation that our family’s in right now," Debbie Hayes said.

Johnson County authorities are developing an education program to fight the heroin problem. Last month, they unveiled a presentation available to every police department in Johnson County.

One of the messages is for parents to lock up their prescription pills, since they are a gateway drug to heroin.

“The driving factor in kids using prescription drugs and then heroin is that they get sick when they stop,” said Dr. Alex Stalcup. “This is the new epidemic.” He also said that within two years of using heroin, people begin to inject the drug for quicker relief, which can lead to death, increases in crime rates, and occurrences of HIV and hepatitis.

Members of Nevada’s Meth Alliance were concerned by Dr. Stalcup’s words, as police and treatment providers are reporting a rise in heroin use.

Dr. Stalcup was asked to speak by members of Join Together Northern Nevada members, part of the meth task force, so they could get help in figuring out how to address the rise in youth prescription drug abuse before it becomes an epidemic. No statistics exist, but officials say they are seeing a rise.

Sgt. Mac Venzon of the regional Street Enforcement Team said heroin arrests have risen from about 1 to 2 percent of the caseload to about 15 percent. Most of the users are young, he said, with the sellers being organized and from Mexico.

The January death of a 15-year-old Reno boy who overdosed on two methadone pills prompted the alliance to investigate the issue. Austin Riley Jones’ parents said he took the pills at a party and likely had no idea of the drug’s fatal consequences.

The group’s public campaigning has been credited with helping reduce local meth use and associated problems.

Stalcup, a pediatrician and medical director of the New Leaf Treatment Center in Lafayette, California, said the Internet is fueling youth prescription drug abuse. He said the age-range of prescription drug addicts are between 15 and 24, many of whom had no previous risk to become addicted.

Increases in heroin users, Stalcup said, means there was a failure to intervene when they were abusing prescription medications. He said treating addicts when they are in jail with a highly effective drug called buprenorphine can help them get clean. He suggested rehab stints longer than 28 days, along with outpatient therapy and sober living.

“Absent intervention, there is no choice but the needle,” Stalcup aid. “Because there is no treatment for them to get off the prescriptions, their disease perpetuates. They need medical management to get through withdrawals, which is a horrible experience.”

“They say this happens to other people, not us. But this is us, and these are our kids,” Stalcup said, encouraging the meth alliance to tap into emergency rooms, health departments, and schools to gather data on youth drug abuse.