Sheriff`s Corner

Hi everyone and welcome to the Sheriff's Corner. I'd like to use this week's Column to tell you a little about how drug abuse seems to be evolving. When we think about drug dealers, we think about street corners, darkened alleyways, etc. we don't think about elderly people, Rush Limbaugh and prescription drugs.

However, recent studies have revealed that prescription drugs has become the most rapidly developing and dominant substance abuse problem. That doesn't mean that marijuana, cocaine, heroin and all of the other traditional chemicals have gone away. They haven't. What it does mean is that we see a new group of crimes coming out of this prescription drug fascination. We have investigated burglaries where the suspect stole only the owner's prescriptions. We see polydrug usage and we are studying the relationship between drug addiction and oxycontin.

Marijuana is still the most widely used illicit drug with some 14.6 million users. Prescription drug abuse is finishing in second with 6.2 million pill-users. The old dominant drugs like crack, heroin and ecstasy are still there. Statistics show that about 2 million people used cocaine in 2002. 700,000 used ecstasy and 200,000 used heroin. About 100,000 used LSD.

Prescription drug abuse isn't really new. However, the research states that the increase is strongly related to increased access and availability thru the Internet. Our agency is very interested in this trend and I'll report more to you later. Take care.