The biggest drug bust in Kentucky state history is underway as hundreds of police target the flood of prescription pills from Florida and other states. The illicit “pill pipeline” between Florida and Kentucky was the focus of our documentary “The OxyContin Express.” Kentucky leads the nation in prescription drug abuse and has become a hot market for pills from Florida, which has become the nation’s largest source of potent painkillers, particularly oxycodone.
Police obtained warrants for 518 people, mostly from Eastern Kentucky, and so far over 300 have been arrested under “Operation Flamingo Road.”
But that just might be the beginning. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
The number of people charged, while eye-opening, still doesn’t show the true extent of the problem, said Kevin Payne, head of the state police drug-enforcement unit for Eastern Kentucky.
State police have information on 1,700 other people going out of the state to get pill prescriptions, Payne said.
“It tells me that this is a huge, huge problem,” he said.
We’re trying to get Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper, who was featured in “The OxyContin Express”, on the phone. According to the story at least 9 warrants were served in Greenup alone.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Terrific news, it’s only a good start though, the real battlefront is in the supply and demand ends of the pipeline: controlling pain medication sources and helping fight addiction and assisting those already addicted. Unless both of these are dealt with, we’ll just be seeing the Oxycontin Express taking an alternate route in the future. The business is so attractive that they’ll just build another pipeline if nothing else is done.
November 19th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
I take vicodin and oxycodone for the treatment of this disease because the doctor prescribed me after a thorough examination, seek information and findrxonline logically points out that these medicines should be tightly controlled by its high content of codeine and this makes one induces these opioids.