This article appeared in the Kansas City Star, www.kansascity.com on 12/30/2008:
During the Great Depression, Kansans chased away the blues with palliatives like Crawford County Deep Shaft — moonshine, that is.
Today, in what may be the worst economy since, they’re reaching for a vast array of prescription medications.
“We’re seeing an extreme uptick in the abuse of pharmacological drugs,” said Jeff Benz, a founder of Mainstream Kansas City Inc., an alcohol and drug rehabilitation and residential treatment center in Wyandotte County. “We have noticed it for several years, but it really became more pronounced in the last few months.”
Benz’s experience is backed by figures showing increased availability of such drugs in Missouri and Kansas.
Some abusers rely on street narcotics, others on alcohol — “the poor man’s drug,” legal since 1933 and virtually recession-proof.
Whatever the chemical crutch, said Dalyn Schmitt, executive director of the Heartland Regional Alcohol & Drug Assessment Regional Center, “it’s a hard time all the way around. There’s the economic stress and it’s the holidays, when people tend to get melancholy anyway.”
Schmitt is seeing a staggering list of stressors and relapse triggers, including job losses, housing worries, stress-induced health problems, bounced checks, gloomy weather, a shrinking job market, higher heating bills and a lack of health care.
The full extent of the problem is masked by yet another recession-driven factor:
“Part of the problem is that people are too broke to get treatment,” said Linda Anderson-Petty with Challenges Inc., which runs drug and alcohol treatment programs.
According to drug industry sales figures, the recession may be forcing some to forgo expensive medications for illnesses, such as heart disease and high blood pressure. But those same numbers show use of pain relievers and mood enhancers — often addictive and often the drugs of choice for first-time abusers — is increasing.
At an “alarming rate,” Drug Enforcement Administration officials told Congress earlier this year. More than 7 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, according to the DEA, an 80 percent increase in six years.
Figures for Missouri and Kansas suggest abuse may be especially pronounced here. State officials say they lack the tools available in most other states to deal with it.
Federal figures show that shipments into Kansas of hydrocodone (the active ingredient in Vicodin) jumped by more than 300 percent since 2000, much in the last year. Oxycodone, another commonly abused synthetic opiod, is up more than 260 percent.
“Without a doubt, there is an increase in use of scheduled drugs in Kansas,” said Jeff Brandau, a special agent at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Either Kansans are in a lot of pain, he said, “or something else is going on.”
Many of the drugs in question are illegally diverted through the Internet or procured through doctor-shopping or forged prescriptions, he said.
Factors fueling the higher abuse rates, he added, include the recession and regional shortages of cocaine and meth.
Similar numbers in Missouri “blow us off the charts,” said Michael Boeger at the state’s Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
He said it’s hard to get a grip on the level of abuse in Missouri because two legitimate large mail-order pharmacies naturally inflate the numbers, importing and re-exporting the drugs.
Boeger notes, however, that Missouri also is part of a national Internet-based supply system for illegal prescriptions.
A Joplin doctor recently surrendered her drug-prescribing authority after she got caught in a scheme that also included an Internet site in Florida and a pharmacy in Colorado.
The doctor who “wrote” the prescriptions never saw any of the “patients,” Boeger said, but she got $15 for every mouse-click approval.
Efforts to deal with the abuse appear stalled, in part because of the same recession fueling the problem.
Neither state is among the 38 states that have instituted electronic databases, known as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs.
The Kansas Legislature passed a law implementing the program, but it remains unfunded in the current budget shortfall. Missouri has a federal grant to study such a program, but the legislature has failed to pass it, partly because of funding concerns.
Written by: Mike McGraw, 816-234-4423 or send e-mail to mcgraw@kcstar.com
Article link: http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/957043.html
Hi Jason,
It is such a sad and disappointing time when our economy fails and people fall to substance use as a way of coping. Of particular interest are the stressors and relapse triggers, “including job losses, housing worries, stress-induced health problems, bounced checks, gloomy weather, a shrinking job market, higher heating bills and a lack of health care.”
When these things happen, even the seemingly small things are blown out-of-proportion. Many years ago, as a single mom on a monthly salary, I can remember being heart-sick when my daughter came home from school and told me she needed a black skirt and white blouse for a holiday choral event later THAT week. She didn’t have either item and it was Christmas so I was already strapped. I remember mulling over choices – does she simply not attend? Do I break out the sewing machine and see what I can make for her? Do I use the credit card, make the purchase and pay for it … later? Call Mom and Dad for help?
And I was one of the lucky ones – I had a good job and the support of a loving family – and other ways to cope. So many people too often do not see any other choices, especially now, so they cope in the ways they know. The complexity of the problems in this economy are evidence of the need for more and more community collaboration – each doing what we can to help another who is suffering.
Thank you for the story and as Joyce would say, “that’s why you’re here”!
It?s laborious to search out knowledgeable individuals on this subject, but you sound like you recognize what you?re talking about! Thanks