Jacksonville,Florida police say tracking down prescription drug’s source is difficult
When it comes to the abuse of prescription drugs in Jacksonville, police say OxiContin is by far the local favorite. Even though Sgt. Jason Bettis, a detective with the Jacksonville,Florida Police Department, has seen people hooked on everything from Ibuprofen to cough medicine, he said most pill-poppers eventually gravitate toward OxiContin.

The brand name painkiller, known on the street as "Oxycotton" or simply "Oxy," contains a timed-release formula of oxycodone, a synthetic opiate. The pill available by prescription only is used to treat pain when around-the-clock relief is needed for an extended period of time, according to information from the manufacturer, Purdue Pharma L.P.People get around the timed-release of the drug by chewing up the pills and rubbing the powder on their gums, police said.Since the drug is obtained legally and then diverted onto the streets, it is hard for law enforcement to be proactive in combating its abuse, Bettis said.

"Because people are getting the pills through proper channels then abusing or selling them, it is nearly impossible to find a source," Bettis said. "If a pharmacist or doctor doesn't catch it, law enforcement can't attack the supply."

Bettis said he knows diligent doctors that check special Web sites to look to see whether their patients are using other doctors to get the same prescriptions that they are issuing.A major prescription fraud case Bettis worked on ended with a conviction in May.

Chastity Edens, 32, was convicted May 30 of obtain-ing a controlled substance by fraud, a several counts of common law forgery stem-ming from counterfeit pre-scriptions written in October 2007, according to the North Carolina Department of Correction. During his investigation, Bettis said he obtained a book belonging to Edens full of code words.

"It took a while, but I was able to break the code," he said. "The code words were different names and pre-scriptions the suspect was using to get pills from different pharmacies."The prescriptions were for mostly OxyContin and Lortab, but Edens would toss in a prescription for an antibiotic every once in a while to disguise her purpose of gathering as many painkillers as possible, Bettis said.

In all, authorities say Edens illegally obtained six pounds of pills.Bettis said that he mostly encounters women in the prescription forgery game."They are usually females in middle income families, a lot of stay-at-home moms," he said.

"Typically they get hooked after using pain pills for a legitimate reason."Many of the women then resort to selling some of their pills to pay for even more, Bettis said."This is often a closet type drug," he said.

"A lot of times the families are not even aware what is going on when we arrest someone because they are so good at hiding their habit."Bettis said he wanted to emphasize how devastating to families prescription drug abuse can be."I have seen families torn apart over pills," he said. "They are much more ad-dictive than the average per-son thinks."