Painkiller Prescriptions Highest in Eastern Kentucky, Report Says

Drugstores, hospitals and other legal drug outlets in eastern Kentucky received more prescription painkillers per capita than anywhere else in the nation from 1998 to 2001, according to a report.

Nearly half a ton of narcotics reached six small mountain counties during that span -- the equivalent of three-quarters of a pound for every adult who lives there, according a story Sunday in the Lexington Herald-Leader, which used an analysis of data from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I can’t imagine that Kentucky has any more pain than Detroit has. There’s something going on,” said April Vallerand, an assistant professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University who serves on pain advisory panels.

The newspaper found that possession and trafficking charges for all controlled substances jumped 348% in eastern Kentucky from 1997 to 2001, while admissions of prescription-drug addicts to residential drug-treatment centers tripled from 1998 to 2001.

One Appalachian pain specialist suggested that eastern Kentucky, with its older population, injured coal miners and high rates of lung cancer, might need large amounts of narcotics to treat legitimate pain.