Local Alliance Tackling Prescription Drug Problem

South Carolina ranks #10 in the country in use per capita of opiates, according to Inspector General Patrick Maley.

“We're nineteenth in overdose deaths,” Maley said.

He recently saw a study that listed use of opiates by county.

“Guess who are the reddest of the reds?” Maley asked. “Pickens and Oconee.”

Manley spoke at a recent meeting of the Prescription Drug Abuse Alliance.

The Prescription Drugs Abuse Alliance is comprised of members of the medical community and law enforcement, who have seen first-hand the damage that prescription drug abuse does in our area.

Dr. Jim Mahanes said that 25 of the 36 accidental deaths that occurred in Pickens County in 2011 were related to prescription drugs.

The alliance started about three years ago as the Narcotics Task Force, “when we realized the demand that was being put on us for prescription narcotics, and the significant number of deaths we were having in Pickens County due to overdose of those medications ” Mahanes said.

The Narcotics Task Force joined up with Baptist Easley and became the Prescription Drugs Abuse Alliance, “to educate our clinicians and other workers in our hospitals about this problem,” Mahanes said.

“And to try to find ways that we may be able to get into the community to broaden the scope of the message that we have about these items that are being prescribed – the good that they can have, but also the harm that they can create,” he said.

Captain Chad Brooks said with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office said the Sheriff's Office has seen prescription drug abuse increase dramatically over the last five years.

He said doctors and pain management clinics should prescribe drugs in lower amounts.

“But the people we see on the street who are selling the pills, I see them getting to 100-160 Hydrocodone, sell 157 of them and keep three to take the day before they go back to the pain clinic just so they've got it in their urine.”

Maley said there's a big difference in fighting prescription drug abuse and fighting the war on drugs such as heroin.

“We control the supply,” he said. “We are the gatekeepers. We can solve this problem.”

Mahanes said the PDAA is having an impact.

“It's gotten better,” he said. “We still have a significant number of chronic offenders, that we're now looking at developing a monitored plan, care plan for them when they come to the hospital, for them to know what their expectations for care are – and it may not include narcotics. We're working on that.”

Recently Mahanes and Henry Campbell with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office recent met will all school district nurses and “listened to some of their war stories,” Mahanes said.

“We tried to enlighten them a little bit about the issues I deal with from the side of prescription drugs as well as what (narcotics officers and other law enforcement) do in their day-to-day work,” he said.

The group is working with Pickens High School Principal Marion Lawson and Angela Watson, Coordinator of Nursing for the School District of Pickens County to set up a forum to talk about these issues.

“So that they can address the questions that the community has about this problem,” Mahanes said.

He hopes that leads to other opportunities to address the community as well.

The PDAA recently joined the Stepping It Up Coalition, which recently received a Drug-Free Communities Grant to help address drug abuse issues in our area, including prescription drugs.

“We feel that this organization can be an important part of that,” Mahanes said. “Through our volunteerism and whatnot we feel we can help them gain information they need to supply to Washington to keep their grant going.”