Burlington's New Addiction

Colin Mixson
03.16.2010

In January 2002 the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) released a report listing heroin as the primary drug threat to the state of Vermont. The Vermont Drug Task Force reported that the availability and abuse of heroin was, at the time, increasing in the cities of Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier, Newport, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury. The Burlington Police Department (BPD) stated that they too considered heroin as their primary focus. Today, while the chemical threat is nearly identical, that being opium, the form is radically different.

"It was about ten, fifteen years ago that we got hit hard by heroin," says Lt. Scharland, the Lieutenant in charge of detectives at BPD, "but that has since moved on. I don't want to say that it's no longer available, because it is, but currently the primary drug threat in Burlington is crack cocaine and pills."

While crack cocaine is an obvious and known drug threat, the term "pills" is less understood. Here Lt. Scharland is referring in large part to opioids, or narcotic analgesics such as Darvon, Opana, Demerol, Kadian, Ultram, and the most common, Oxycontin. Like heroin, prescription narcotic analgesics share opium as their main active ingredient. The human brain's neurons had specific receptor sites for opiate drugs: opium, heroin, Oxycontin and morphine. Opiates operate by locking onto the endorphin-receptor sites on nerve endings in the brain, resulting in a succession of events that leads to euphoria or analgesia. The end effect is euphoria, and relief from pain (analgesia).

Narcotic analgesics are commonly prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain as a result of anything from invasive surgery and broken bones, to extracted wisdom teeth and bad headaches. They are the direct descendant of what was once known as the "drug of mercy", morphine. However, like those who used, and still use the forefather of today's drugs, patients of modern narcotic analgesics commonly suffer from another potent side effect. During the civil war it was called "soldiers disease". Today it is known simply as addiction.

"I don't think it's limited to Burlington," says Stuart "Mickey" Wiles, director of the Turning Point Center of Chittenden County, a recovery center that provides group support and free sober environments for people with addictions ranging from cigarettes to heroin. "From my understanding prescription drug addiction is the fastest growing in the country, and a lot of it has to do with availability."

Aside from its administration, prescription pills are among the most reliable narcotics available on the street today. Produced not by criminal cartels, or in basement laboratories, prescription narcotics are constructed by legitimate commercial manufacturers. This results in prescription pills, as opposed to other illegal drugs, having consistent doses and consistent ingredients. In other words, while heroin found on the street can have anywhere from 30% to 80% purity, every single Oxycontin, aside from its size, which generally comes in 40-80mg pills, will be chemically identical to the next. This consistency generally leads to a safer product, devoid of unwanted chemicals that are often "cut" into other drugs in attempts to increase profit. However, this same level of relative safety inherent in prescription pills, as well as the manner they are often obtained has led many users to the conclusion that prescription pills are a different class of drug as compared to other illegal narcotics.

"One of the biggest things you'll see with cocaine is that you're buying it from the street, and you're buying it from generally unreliable sources. So, the worst thing for an addict is for them to call their dealer and find out that they don't have anything. Because people often obtain prescription pills through legal channels, it has a different perception. The reality is that if you are prescribed one Oxycontin every three hours, that one every four hours is your prescription. If you take four every three hours, then those extra three become as much of a recreational drug as cocaine."

As a result of this discrepancy in the perception of prescription pills when compared to typical illegal drugs like crack cocaine and heroin, so too exists a discrepancy in the perception of the typical drug addict and . While no local surveys have been conducted that explore the extent of prescription pill abuse in Burlington, numbers are more available within a broader context. Prescription Drug Abuse Information website states that prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused category of drugs, just behind marijuana, but ahead of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs. The National Institutes of Health estimates that nearly 20 percent of people in the United States have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons. In 2008, 2.5 percent of 12th grade males and 0.6 percent of 12th grade females reported taking the drugs in the past year. In 2000, about 43 percent of hospital emergency admissions for drug overdoses, nearly 500,000 people, happened because of misused prescription drugs.

"I was (speaking) in a class at Champlain College," says Lt. Scharland, "and it was made up of half sociology students, and half law enforcement students, and I said, 'hey look, I'm just interested, not asking anymore but, who here uses drugs?' and I was shocked to find that almost every person in the room, including law enforcement students, raised their hand. Then I asked, 'what is the prevalent drug of choice on campus, right now, for Champlain?' and everybody agreed, pills. Oxycontin, pills."

This isn't to say that Oxycontin is unavailable through illegal channels. Like cocaine and heroin, Oxycontin is often obtained from the larger cities surrounding the state of Vermont. In cities like New York, Boston, or Hartford opiate based pain killers can be purchased cheaply on the street, and in Vermont sold for as much as four times what they were obtained for, and drug dealers aren't the only ones cashing in.

"I've seen 80 year old women trying to meet their bills," says Lt. Scharland, " and so they start selling off their medication as a way to make ends meet."

In Burlington, Oxycontin is priced at around a dollar per milligram. With pills generally coming in 40-80mg doses, this leaves a single pill costing as much as $80.00. While new users will often divide the pill to be used over the course of several doses, a person who has become heavily addicted to Oxycontin, or other narcotic analgesics can go through as many as three 80mg pills per day. As a result, addicts will often turn to crime as a means of providing for their expensive drug habit.

"This is just my estimate," said Lt. Scharland, "and I've been a police officer in the city for 22 years. I would say that the majority of what we respond to here, in terms of property crimes, larceny, burglaries, retail theft, financial crime, passing bad checks, forgeries, and violence too, assaults, home invasions, the majority of those things we respond to is a result, or has some connection with drugs. Usually our property crimes, financial crimes, eight times out of ten those folks are committing those crimes because they're fulfilling their drug habit."

As Lt, Scharland stated, heroin has moved on from Burlington. It's here, but not in force. However, that does not mean that the threat heroin once posed has simply evaporated. Instead, it has changed its form. Cleaner, more available and easier to administer, pills like Oxycontin have risen in popularity to become the primary drug threat in this city, if not this nation. However, despite the nice veneer coated on prescription pills, Oxycontin is a powerful, expensive and highly addictive narcotic drug, whose only significant variance from other illegal drugs is not chemical, but psychological. Like the difference between imperialism and globalization, the perception of heroin and crack cocaine is different, and worse, then the perception of prescription pills. The reality is that the drug isn't important, it's suffering addiction that matters, and Burlington is addicted to pills.