Florida-Appalachia 'pill pipeline' documented well

Mariana van Zeller of Current has done the best television report we've seen on the outrageous "pill pipeline" that runs from Florida, where 85 percent of the nation's pain-killers are prescribed, to Appalachia, where prescription-drug abuse is rampant. Her report, which aired Wednesday night and is online, is titled "The OxyContin Express," for the scheduled flights between Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Tri-State Airport at Huntington, W.Va., which also serves Ohio and Kentucky.

Van Zeller notes that people from all over the nation come to Florida for pills, for use and resale, but the major middle of her 47-minute report focuses on Greenup County, Ky., not far from Huntington. It's not really "the heart of Appalachia," as she calls it, and some of the usual stereotypes appear. "They call us pillbillies," says one inmate at the county jail, where Sheriff Keith Cooper says 90 percent of incarcerations are related to prescription drug abuse.

Cooper says that when he called state and federal officials in Florida to complain, they told him, "You're a hick sheriff from the hills of Kentucky. Don't be trying to tell us how to do our job." Cooper added, "I'm incensed because all of the profit is down there; all of the pain is up here. ... Literally every family in this county has been affected in one way or another."

Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, an Eastern Kentucky physician, goes farther: "Throughout the state of Kentucky there's no family that has not been impacted one way or another by this. If we see somebody in the obituary columns of the newspaper and they're in their 30s or 40s, most likely it's because of a drug overdose. ... It's so pervasive we don't have the money to test everyone."

After lobbying by Mongiardo and others, the Florida legislature passed a law to track prescriptions. It won't take effect until the end of 2010, van Zeller reports. "After so many years of inaction," she says, "the damage has already been done."