Seniors Charged With Selling Prescriptions

This is not necessarily gay news ,but, just tells us how bad the society we live in is getting.


Seniors Charged With Selling Prescriptions



By ROGER ALFORD, Associated Press Writer / 12.12.2005


Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail,
imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel
around her.
The woman — who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December — is
among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a
crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling
their painkillers and other medications to addicts.
"When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell
their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves
and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," Floyd
County jailer Roger Webb said.
Since April 2004, Operation UNITE, a Kentucky anti-drug task force crated
largely in response to rampant abuse of the powerful and sometimes lethal
painkiller OxyContin, has charged more than 40 people 60 or older with selling
primarily prescription drugs in the mountains.
"It used to be a rare occasion to have an elderly inmate," Webb said. "Five
years ago it was a rarity."
Local jails are having to bear the increased cost of caring for old and often
sickly inmates.
"You've got to give them more attention," Webb said. "It's putting a strain
on my deputies. We're understaffed anyway. You've got to get them doctors, and
meet their medical needs."
Researchers suspect the problem is not limited to Appalachia.
Elderly people "may be looking for a way to bring in a little extra money,"
said Erin Artigiani, deputy director of the University of Maryland Center for
Substance Abuse Research. "We haven't heard a lot about senior citizens being
a source of those drugs. We know college students do this. It's not much a
stretch to think that seniors could do it, too."
Dr. Anita Cornett, a physician in Hyden, said one of her patients, a reformed
drug addict, told her that he bought all his drugs not from a known dealer,
but from elderly people.
Cornett said she does random drug screenings to make sure her patients are
taking their prescription drugs instead of selling them. In addition, staffers
routinely call patients and ask them to bring their prescription bottles in
so that the pills can be counted.
The Rev. Doug Abner, pastor of Community Church in Manchester and an
anti-drug activist, said senior citizens may not understand the seriousness of
selling prescription drugs.
"They justify it because they're having a hard time financially," he said.
"Left to ourselves, we can justify anything, but they're really part of the
problem."
However, Dan Smoot, a former state police drug detective who heads the task
force, said the elderly people being charged are not necessarily struggling to
put food on the table.
"Most of the elderly we arrest are merely continuing a family tradition," he
said. "It has been part of their culture for a long time."
Neeley, the old woman who was arrested along with her son and his girlfriend,
faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of trafficking in prescription
drugs as well as marijuana.
However, a prosecutor has agreed not to oppose "shock probation" if Neeley
enters a guilty plea at her next court appearance, Dec. 29. Under shock
probation, a defendant who is unlikely to repeat the crime is released after
getting a brief taste of life behind bars.
Her attorney, Terry Jacobs, said the plea bargain would be a gamble, because
the judge could decide not to grant her shock probation, and "six months is a
death sentence for her."
In a telephone interview, Neeley denied selling drugs. She said she suffers
from emphysema and asthma and sometimes uses a wheelchair. She said she was
shocked when police arrived to arrest her and made the 4-foot 8-inch, 120-pound
woman walk from her house to a cruiser.
"I had to hold my hands up all the way," she said. "They wouldn't let me hold
them down."
Her lawyer declined to discuss specifics of the charges. But speaking
generally, he said: "You've got a depressed economy. You've got an opportunity for
these folks to make money. If you're seeing a disproportionate number of
elderly, it's because they are the people who are going to be prescribed most of
the drugs."





Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved