Ohio county fights extreme pill addiction problem: 1 in 10 babies born addicted

[Liberal_in_LA]

Ohio county fights extreme pill addiction problem


Nearly one in 10 babies were born addicted to drugs last year in southern Ohio's Scioto County. Rehab admissions for prescription painkiller addictions were five times the national average. In a rare step, the health commissioner declared a public health emergency, something usually reserved for disease outbreaks.

The culprits putting the rural county at the forefront of a burgeoning national problem are not only the people abusing the painkillers, officials say. They blame at least eight area "pill mills" — clinics or doctors that dole out prescription medications like OxyContin with little discretion. At least two health care providers are facing criminal charges.

"I would describe it as if a pharmaceutical atomic bomb went off," said Lisa Roberts, a nurse for the health department in Portsmouth, an Ohio River city of about 20,000 with falling population and high unemployment.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/12/22/national/a124207S11.DTL#ixzz19SmkEnSN

[Recursion]

1. I remember the hysteria about "crack babies" 20 years ago

That turned out to be basically nothing. Unfortunately the moral panic of the day has a way of attracting "trending" articles.

[Mariana]

2. Didn't most of the "crack babies" turn out actually to have

fetal alcohol syndrome? I seem to remember that the symptoms of FAS and those of the "crack babies" were identical or close to it.

[Recursion]

5. Right, and the ones whose mothers "just" smoked crack...

...turned out to have no significant gap in their school performance at age 10.

[theHandpuppet]

6. I invite you to spend 6 months in Scioto County

It sounds as if you need a good dose of reality.

[Fumesucker]

7. We won't have to, soon the entire US will be just like Scioto county..

Thanks to our politicians allowing every decent paying job to be exported somewhere else, or failing that importing people from other countries to work for less money.

Indeed, I suspect that Scioto county today will look like paradise compared to the US in a decade or two.

[Recursion]

8. Fortunately, the data eventually win out over hysteria

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27coca.html

It was yet another moral panic. There was no "crack baby" epidemic.

[theHandpuppet]

10. Would you care to return to the subject of this thread?

Perhaps when you have spent some time reviewing the statistics for poverty, hunger, crime and drug abuse in Scioto County (and the Appalachian counties of southern Ohio) you can possibly make some relevant comment about this subject. Better yet, listen to those of us who KNOW Scioto County, like some folks contributing to this thread.

[Recursion]

11. I brought up crack babies because this is the same kind of "trending" article

And until CDC or the state health department can collect the data, there's no reason to think this isn't another moral panic. And actually people on site are probably the worst ones to ask; if you ask most people they would say the crime rate is worse today than 40 years ago (it's not).

[theHandpuppet]

12. In other words, you're the one having the knee-jerk reaction

It's much easier than doing the actual research on the problems in Scioto County, the subject of this thread.

[theHandpuppet]

3. That's my home county

I was born and raised there; still have family there. The neverending poverty and despair has destroyed a once-proud people who have nothing left but to find ways to kill the pain -- and I'm not talking physical pain. You have to witness it firsthand to understand.

[geminifemini]

4. Not surprising

I lived in Scioto County, but left years ago. I was a paramedic there. This area is so depressed with no hope of changing. Many people have died from oxy overdoses. Some have been killed for pills. It is a viable currency for a whole subculture that is growing constantly.
It has a beautiful countryside that has been treated like a sewer with the pollution from industry into the Ohio River and unmonitored residential sewage drainage into its creeks flowing there.
There are no jobs nor growth except for legal or health industries which are perpetually fed by economic and drug abuse factors.
If I had to live there again I would strongly feel the need to find a similar escape from the reality of life there, too.

[Enthusiast]

9. In rural Ohio this has reached

the level of chemical warfare. No exaggeration.