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PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE A "TERRIBLE PROBLEM"
Friday, March 19th, 2010 -- 11:32 am
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
A local emergency room doctor says he sees prescription drug abuse “all the time” and it’s a “terrible problem.”
"The vast majority of the people come in and think we're a drive-thru window. It's just a terrible problem," says Dr. Max Olesevich of Memorial Medical Center in Neillsville.
People seeking medications are constantly coming to the ER, he says.
Pain relievers are most often sought. "The main ones we see are Vicodin and Percocet. The harder-core patients are usually looking for IV medication, plus pain tablets to use at home," he says.
Aside from the obvious dependence and health risks, prescription drug abuse all too often leads to crime.
"If people don't get them (at the hospital), they go seek other sources. I understand the street value of some of these drugs is $50 per pill," he says. "We start seeing those people because they get so sneaky trying to get more from us."
Olesevich says he’s had to call the police many times after denying prescription meds to patients. Those patients often become combative.
How in demand have these drugs become? Take into consideration this weekend's brazen burglary of a drug manufacturer's warehouse in Connecticut. In a plot right out of a movie, the burglars cut a whole in the roof, repelled in and made off with $75-million of prescription meds—all during a severe thunderstorm.
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