Captain James Durr, who commands PBSO’s Narcotics Division, says today’s epidemic of prescription drug abuse in Palm Beach County is “much worse” than the crack cocaine problem back in the 1980s.

Addressing the West Boca Community Council’s first public meeting of 2010, he told the group that 383 Palm Beach County residents died last year from prescription drug abuse.  That’s three times the death rate of motor vehicle fatalities and a 125% increase over the number of such deaths three years ago.

The prescription drug of choice is oxycontin, a synthetic variation of heroin that goes by various names.  In the past year, more prescriptions were written for this drug in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County) than in the entire state of California.

Although the rapidly expanding number of so-called pain clinics has gotten a lot of attention lately, Captain Durr said they represented only the tip of the prescription drug abuse iceberg.  Doctor shopping, which most of us first heard about when the drug problem of Palm Beach County’s Rush Limbaugh surfaced several years ago, also contributes to the current crisis, as do other sources of supply.

Why has South Florida become the pill mill capital for much of the United States?  Captain Durr described the state of Florida as “asleep” on this issue at a time when most other states were passing laws and administering programs to combat prescription drug abuse.

He noted there were encouraging signs of a turnaround, however.  The recent freeze on the opening of new pain clinics in Palm Beach County is one.  The county now has the only pharmaceutical crime unit in the United States.  And the state legislature is working on bills that will enable authorities to take more aggressive measures to combat the scourge of prescription drug abuse.

Alan Kellock