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89–040 PDF 2004

S. Hrg. 108–261

LEGAL DRUGS, ILLEGAL PURPOSES:

THE ESCALATING ABUSE OF

PRESCRIPTION MEDICATIONS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

AUGUST 6, 2003

FIELD HEARING IN BANGOR, MAINE

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL D. BOPP, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

DAVID A. KASS, Chief Investigative Counsel 

BRUCE KYLE, Professional Staff Member 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel 

JASON M. YANUSSI, Minority Professional Staff Member 

AMY B. NEWHOUSE, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 1

Senator Sununu ................................................................................................ 3

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2003

Margaret Greenwald, M.D., Chief Medical Examiner, State of Maine ............... 5

Marcella H. Sorg, R.N., Ph.D., D-ABFA, Margaret Chase Smith Center for 

Public Policy, University of Maine ..................................................................... 7

John H. Burton, M.D., Medical Director, Maine Emergency Medical Services, 

Research Director, Department of Emergency Medicine, Maine Medical 

Center .................................................................................................................... 9

Kimberly Johnson, Director, Maine Office of Substance Abuse .......................... 11

Michael J. Chitwood, Chief of Police, Portland, Maine ........................................ 22

Lt. Michael Riggs, Washington County Sheriff’s Department ............................. 25

Jason Pease, Detective Sergeant, Criminal Investigations Division, Lincoln 

County Sheriff’s Department .............................................................................. 27

Richard C. Dimond, M.D., Mount Desert Island Drug Task Force ..................... 34

Barbara Royal, Administrative Director, Open Door Recovery Center ............... 37

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Burton, John H., M.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared Statement with attachments ........................................................... 48

Chitwood, Michael J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 60

Dimond, Richard C., M.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 34

Prepared Statement with an attachment ....................................................... 72

Greenwald, Margaret, M.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 43

Johnson, Kimberly: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 56

Pease, Jason: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 27

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 70

Riggs, Lt. Michael: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 25

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 66

Royal, Barbara: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 37

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 77

Sorg, Marcella H., R.N., Ph.D., D–ABFA: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 45

APPENDIX

Charts submitted by Senator Collins ..................................................................... 82

Patricia Hickey, Bangor, Maine, prepared statement with attachments ........... 85

Page

IV

Kathryn T. Bernier, Bangor, Maine, prepared statement .................................... 95

Ruth Blauer, Executive Director, Maine Association of Substance Abuse Programs (MASAP), prepared statement with attachments .................................. 97

Steven Gressitt, M.D., Acting Secretary, Maine Benzodiazepine Study Group, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 106

Tammy Snyder, prepared statement ...................................................................... 107

Maine Drug-Related Mortality Patterns: 1997–2002, study by Marcella H. 

Sorg, R.N., Ph.D., D–ABFA, Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, University of Maine, Margaret Greenwald, M.D., Maine Chief Medical 

Examiner, in cooperation with the Maine Office of the Attorney General 

and Maine Office of Substance Abuse, December 27, 2002 .............................. 114 

(1)

LEGAL DRUGS, ILLEGAL PURPOSES: 

THE ESCALATING ABUSE OF 

PRESCRIPTION MEDICATIONS 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2003

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in Council 

Chambers, City Hall, Bangor, Maine, Hon. Susan M. Collins, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Collins and Sununu. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. Good morning. The Committee will come to 

order. This morning the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs is holding a field hearing on the diversion and abuse of prescription drugs. 

I am very pleased to welcome my colleague from New Hampshire 

and a Member of the Committee, Senator John Sununu, who has 

traveled to Bangor to join in this hearing this morning. 

Welcome to Maine, Senator. We are delighted to have you here. 

In 2001, deaths from prescription drug overdoses exceeded for 

the first time deaths from illegal drugs, an alarming trend that 

continues today. 

The number of Americans who regularly abuse prescription 

drugs was estimated at 1.6 million in 1998. Today that estimate is 

9 million. 

It is tragically clear that prescription drugs, many as powerful 

and addictive as illicit drugs, increasingly are being diverted from 

legitimate use to illegal trafficking and abuse. 

This national problem has hit rural States particularly hard: 

Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina, for example, are all 

experiencing epidemics of prescription drug abuse, particularly in 

their rural regions. 

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration reports that the 

diversion of prescription pain killers, oxycodone in particular, is an 

emerging threat in northern New Hampshire, a State already fighting a tide of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs rolling in from 

the south. 

No State, however, has been hit harder than our State of Maine. 

2

1The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 82. 

2The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 83. 

As this chart shows,1 the number of accidental deaths in Maine 

from all drugs increased six-fold from 1997 to 2002, jumping from 

19 to 126. 

Prescription drugs were present in 60 percent of those deaths 

last year. As you can see, there has been an extraordinary increase. 

Also alarming, according to the 2002 Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Survey, is that as many as 25 percent of the State’s high 

school juniors and seniors abused prescription drugs. 

The category of prescription drugs most prevalent in this epidemic consists of opiate pain killers classified as Schedule II drugs. 

That is the Federal designation given to legal drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and addiction. 

The abuse of OxyContin in rural regions occurred swiftly. Now 

another Schedule II drug, methadone, is gaining the same degree 

of notoriety and it is showing up with growing frequency in autopsy 

reports. 

In Florida, methadone was present in 556 drug deaths last year, 

an increase of 56 percent over 2001; in North Carolina, methadone 

deaths rose 700 percent in 4 years; in Maine, methadone was the 

cause or contributing factor in 4 deaths in 1997, but last year it 

was present in 46 deaths. 

The chart that we are displaying now shows the dominant role 

that methadone has played in this crisis.2 As you can see, a combination of drugs is most responsible for death, but right behind 

that is methadone. 

The Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network reported that in 2001 

nearly 11,000 people turned up in emergency rooms after abusing 

methadone, almost double the number of such visits in 1999. 

Methadone was developed in the late 1930’s as a pain killer. It 

was only in the 1960’s that its value in treating addiction was recognized. 

Used properly, methadone is a beneficial drug; but as the overdose numbers prove, it is a killer when used improperly. 

There are no national data on the amount of diverted methadone 

that originates from pain prescriptions compared to addiction treatment clinics. State-by-state anecdotal evidence suggests that treatment plans account from between one-third to one-half of the diversion. 

Although the majority of methadone overdoses may well come 

from pain prescriptions, the impact of treatment centers as a 

source is significant and troubling. 

The increase of more than 200 percent in methadone purchases 

by addiction clinics since 2000 is a powerful indicator of the overall 

increase in opiate addiction and of the amount of clinic methadone 

vulnerable to diversion. 

The dramatic increase in methadone abuse and deadly overdose 

coincides not only with the crush of new prescription opiate addicts 

needing treatment as well as with methadone’s resurgence as a 

pain medication, but also with changes in the Federal regulation 

of addiction treatment clinics in 2001. 

3

Two significant developments occurred: The number of doses a 

clinic client could take home to avoid daily clinic visits was increased greatly. 

Under the new regulation a patient could take home as much as 

a 31-day supply versus a 6-day supply under the old rule. 

And second, a therapy of megadoses, doses many times greater 

than what had been standard, gained greater acceptance. 

But it is not just methadone and other Schedule II prescription 

drugs, such as oxycodone, that are doing the damage. In State after 

State, medical treatment and law enforcement authorities are reporting an ever expanding array of prescription drugs being diverted from their intended purposes to illegal purposes. 

These drugs may well be less notorious and subject to less scrutiny, and are increasingly being abused in combinations that result 

in addictions, dependency, and overdoses that are extremely difficult to treat. 

As we will hear today, the means by which these drugs are diverted range from petty theft to large-scale fraud and organized 

criminal activity. 

It is tragically ironic that while our streets are awash in diverted 

prescription medications, the under treatment of pain in legitimate 

patients remains a national problem. 

The American Medical Association reports that each year some 

13 million Americans suffer from pain that could and should be relieved. A primary reason for this, according to the AMA, is that 

honest and caring physicians are increasingly reluctant to prescribe 

adequate pain relief, lest the drugs be diverted and lead to addiction and overdose and for fear that their prescription practices will 

be investigated. 

The diversion of prescription drugs must be brought under control, but measures to accomplish that goal cannot interfere with access to vital pain-relieving drugs by legitimate patients. 

Drug abuse has its greatest impact at the local level—on our 

streets, in our home, our schools, and in our workplaces. 

It is for that reason that much of the testimony we will hear this 

morning will be from those in the fields of medicine treatment and 

law enforcement who deal with this crisis on the front lines. 

The experiences of these Mainers are shared by their counterparts throughout the country, and I know that what this Committee learns today will be a great help as we proceed as a group 

to work together to tackle this nationwide and growing crisis. 

I would now like to turn to the distinguished senator from New 

Hampshire for any opening remarks that he may have; but again, 

let me say, Senator Sununu, how much we appreciate your being 

here today. I was delighted when you joined the Governmental Affairs Committee because of your well deserved reputation as a 

thoughtful and effective legislator. It is wonderful to have you here 

today. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SUNUNU 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you, Chairman Collins. It is a pleasure 

to be here. 

One of the reasons I am so pleased to be a Member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, in addition to your great leadership, 

4

is the fact that we deal with so many and such a variety of complex 

issues. 

We deal with Homeland Security and National Security issues on 

the Committee, challenges with our information technology system, 

and in this case, no different, a complex problem that involves cooperative law enforcement at the State and Federal level, regulations we are dealing with, prescription drugs, and finding the best 

way to deal with the problem of illegal drugs or the abuse of the 

prescription drugs all over the country. 

It is a pleasure to be here to be able to take testimony from a 

number of panelists that we might not otherwise get a chance to 

hear from in Washington, a broad array of individuals, researchers, 

law enforcement representatives, and, of course, a lot of people who 

are involved in the treatment and the human services side of this 

problem. 

I think the importance of dealing with problems created by illegal trade in prescription drugs and other illegal drugs is indicated 

by the statistics that you outlined at the beginning of the hearing, 

in particular, the fact that overdose deaths from prescription drugs 

have surpassed that from other drugs in 2001, and I think that is 

an alarm signal. 

It underscores the importance of getting our hands around this 

problem and discussing and identifying better ways to deal with it. 

This is something that is of great importance to all parts of the 

country but in particular, as Senator Collins outlined, to rural 

areas of the country. New Hampshire and Maine, I think, have 

seen very similar trends in the more rural parts of our States, and 

that brings the problem and challenge and the issues close to home 

for me. 

It probably means that the method that will be identified for 

dealing with this problem in our States or in certain parts of the 

rural parts of our States will be different than the way we might 

address or attack this kind of a law enforcement problem in more 

urban areas of the country. 

It is important that we hear from representatives from those 

parts of the country that are being affected, again, from the rural 

areas that oftentimes do not get the attention that we would like 

to see in Washington. 

It is important that we try to understand how to strike a good 

balance in regulation in providing assistance to the panelists who 

are represented here, that we provide right incentives to physicians—both to attract and monitor prescriptions—but also to deal 

with the important issue of providing pain relief to those individuals that need it so desperately to live more normal lives. And of 

course, with law enforcement to strike the right balance between 

being effective in dealing with the problem that does threaten security of our communities, but also being fair minded in the kinds of 

tools and power that is given to those law enforcement agencies. 

This is a great setting and a great forum for this kind of hearing. 

I very much look forward to hearing testimony from all of you. 

Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Senator Sununu. 

5

1The prepared statement of Dr. Greenwald appears in the Appendix on page 84. 

I am now pleased to welcome our first panel of witnesses today. 

They are each very distinguished in their fields and bring a great 

deal of expertise to our discussion this morning. 

Dr. Margaret Greenwald is the chief medical examiner for the 

State of Maine. 

With her is Marcella Sorg who has a Ph.D. and is a faculty member at the University of Maine School of Nursing. She is also director of the Interdisciplinary Training for Health Care for Rural 

Areas Program at the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy at the University of Maine. 

They are the co-authors of a very important report entitled, 

‘‘Maine Drug-Related Mortality Patterns, 1997–2002,’’ which was 

published last summer. 

The statistical information that they gathered is used in my 

opening statement, and I want to credit them as being the source 

of that. It was really an eye-opening report, and we look forward 

to hearing your testimony. 

I am also very pleased to welcome Dr. John Burton. He is the 

medical director of the Maine Emergency Medical Services and research director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Maine 

Medical Center in Portland. 

Dr. Burton is a very well known physician whom I have had the 

great pleasure of working with on a number of issues. Doctor, I 

very much appreciate your driving up from Portland to be with us 

today. 

He will provide us with a view of drug abuse and overdose from 

the perspective of an emergency room physician. 

Kimberly Johnson we are pleased to welcome as well. She is the 

director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse. 

Her office provides leadership for the State’s drug abuse prevention, intervention, and treatment program and collects important 

data on the problem of substance abuse. 

Thank you all for being here today. 

Dr. Greenwald, we will start with you. 

TESTIMONY OF MARGARET GREENWALD, M.D.,1 CHIEF 

MEDICAL EXAMINER, STATE OF MAINE 

Dr. GREENWALD. Thank you very much. Chairman Collins and 

Senator Sununu, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear 

before you on a topic which is of great concern to me as a public 

health professional and as the chief medical examiner for the State 

of Maine. 

The abuse of prescription medications has been a major contributor to the amount of increase that we have seen in drug-related 

deaths in the State of Maine, and these deaths, of course, represent 

only a small part of the larger problem of substance abuse, which, 

as you mentioned, Chairman Collins, is rapidly becoming an epidemic in rural States. 

When I came to Maine in 1997, I was very pleased after being 

in a metropolitan area to see only 34 drug-related deaths in the entire State for the year of 1997. 

6

However, as the deaths began to gradually increase in the year 

2000, it became clear that we were looking at a serious trend. 

Since my office is in the Office of the Attorney General, I spoke 

with Attorney General Rowe, and he felt that it would be important to provide a good statistical look at this problem. 

So Dr. Sorg and I, with the support of Kimberly Johnson from 

the Office of Substance Abuse and with a very important grant 

from the Maine Justice Assistance Council, were able to provide 

these statistics which we hoped would be used in just this way by 

policymakers and health care professionals, important to law enforcement, and also for the public to know what was happening in 

our State. 

A little bit of background of my office. The chief medical examiner investigates all unnatural or suspicious deaths for the State 

of Maine, so whenever there is a drug-related death that is identified, my office is immediately notified, and we actually direct the 

death investigation. 

As part of that investigation, we work directly with law enforcement and sometimes ask for more overall assistance from the 

Maine DEA or from the Maine State Police. 

All of those cases are autopsied in Augusta at our facility, the office of chief medical examiner, and we do blood analyses on all of 

the drug-related deaths. 

This includes not just the drugs which are illegal drugs which 

may cause the death, but we also end up seeing drugs which are 

legitimately prescribed to these patients and may be present in the 

blood. 

We do a toxicology screen that literally looks for hundreds of prescription drugs in the deaths that we are examining. 

When we determine a cause of death, which is one of the major 

points that we analyzed in this study, we are looking at all of these 

factors. We are looking at the circumstances of death, we look at 

the pathologic findings from the autopsy, and we also look at the 

drug tests that are there. We have to separate out those drugs 

which may be legitimately present from those which may have 

caused the death. 

In certain circumstances, however, because of the number of 

drugs and the levels that are present, as pathologists we cannot 

really say which particular drug caused the death. 

So you do see in the chart that you looked at earlier that there 

were a lot of deaths that were caused by polydrug overdoses, or 

multiple-drug overdoses, and that is a real problem in analyzing 

these deaths. 

So one of the things that Dr. Sorg and I did was to separate out 

two distinct different analysis. One was to actually analyze the 

deaths by cause of death, so which drugs were specifically indicated 

on the death certificate as causing the death. 

And then a separate and distinct analysis, which was to look at 

all of the drugs present in the toxicology which really gave us a picture of the drugs that were being used by the people in the State 

of Maine as well as those that were important in the death. 

The study, as you know, covered the 5 years from 1997 and actually ended in June 2002, but the chart that indicates the accidental 

7

1The study submitted for the Record appears in the Appendix on page 114. 

2The prepared statement of Dr. Sorg appears in the Appendix on page 45. 

and suicidal overdose, the numbers include final numbers from 

2002; so it is actually an update from the study itself.1

I think those numbers are probably some of the most important 

things that came out of the study. And as you noted, in 1997 we 

had 34 drug deaths and in 1998 and 1999 the deaths increased 

slightly. 

In 2000 we really had a major increase, and we began to see a 

two-time increase in the deaths since 1997; in 2001 there was a tripling of the drug deaths; and in 2002 the total numbers, there was 

a five-fold increase; and for the accidental overdoses it was, as you 

stated, a six-fold increase from 1997. So that is a very frightening 

figure. 

In 2003, as we look at those numbers which are not on the chart, 

there does seem to be a slight decrease. Since we are very early at 

the point of analyzing those figures, it is a little early to tell whether that will maintain throughout the year. 

But the major conclusions from the study are as follows: The increase in deaths is primarily due to accidental overdose; the majority of deaths are caused by prescription drugs; overall 62 percent 

of accidental deaths and 94 percent of suicides are caused by prescription drugs. 

The drug deaths affect all of Maine counties across the board. 

There is a slight difference in Cumberland County in that Cumberland County had 34 percent of the drug-related deaths as compared to 21 percent of the population. So that county actually did 

have a slightly more than would be expected by population numbers. 

And the demographics of the victims are essentially similar to 

what you see throughout Maine as a whole in terms of age and 

education. 

Some of the significant differences were that there were 14 percent more males and there were 34 percent fewer who were married, which gives us some indication of what groups we need to look 

at in terms of the effects. 

Prescription drug abuse is a difficult problem, a multidisciplinary 

approach is important. I think that the Prescription Drug Monitoring Act is a good first step but it will need some good funding 

as will our law enforcement which requires a lot of time and effort 

to investigate these deaths. As you mentioned, the doctors who are 

trying to treat the pain patients and separate out those people who 

are going to be abusing the drugs will need research and education 

to help them identify those two groups. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Doctor. Dr. Sorg. 

TESTIMONY OF MARCELLA H. SORG,2 R.N., Ph.D., D–ABFA, MARGARET CHASE SMITH CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MAINE 

Dr. SORG. Chairman Collins and Senator Sununu, I am pleased 

to be here this morning to talk to you about this very important 

problem. I represent the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public 

Policy. 

8

Our Drug and Alcohol Research Program has been working with 

Maine and New Hampshire and other rural States to try and address these issues of rural drug use and abuse. 

Our study of Maine mortality patterns includes 374 decedents, as 

you said, between 1997 and 2002. The investigatory challenges for 

death investigations are very significant because many persons 

have multiple prescribers and pharmacies, and it is very difficult 

for investigators to find data on all the prescriptions for a death. 

Further, because people frequently fail to discard unused or old 

medications, current prescription status may not reveal complete 

information about the person’s access to drugs even in their own 

home. 

Additionally, the drugs at the scene may or may not be related 

to the drugs found in the victim. 

Our study covered 5 years, but we have conducted more detailed 

studies in 2001 to find out about prescription status. That is where 

our statistics of 52 percent come from. 

We looked at 2001 and discovered that prescription status is 

available for almost all of the suicides but for only about half of the 

accidental deaths. 

With those who have prescription information, 88 percent of the 

suicide victims and 52 percent of the accident victims had a prescription for at least one drug that caused the death. 

So in other words, there is a subset of those for which we have 

prescription information, and of those, the accidents are less likely 

to have a legitimate prescription. 

Our examination of the 374 decedents from the 5-year period 

demonstrated that overdose victims are likely to have other medical problems. 

Fifty-five percent have a history of mental illness including depression, and about half—50 percent—have a history of drug 

abuse. 

The increase in drug deaths is largely a problem with drugs prescribed for pain, anxiety, and depression; and these are often found 

in combination. 

An overwhelming majority of deaths in Maine involve narcotics 

prescribed for pain and including, as you mentioned, methadone, 

oxycodone, fentanyl, and others. 

Narcotics, including heroin, are mentioned as cause of death in 

over 53 percent of the deaths. Prescription narcotics comprise 65 

percent of the narcotics deaths. 

Narcotics are among the top five drugs found in the toxicology 

results when we look at those for both accidental and suicidal 

deaths, but the drugs are different. 

We tend to find methadone and heroin more in the accidents, 

and we tend to find oxycodone and propoxyphene in the suicides. 

Methadone is mentioned as a cause of death, alone or in combination, in 18 percent of all drug deaths, 26 percent of accidental 

drug deaths, and 33 percent of drug deaths caused by narcotics. It 

is found in the toxicology tests of about a quarter of all of our drug 

deaths. 

Methadone is often found with other narcotics, most frequently 

heroin and oxycodone. Most people who died from methadone toxicity were not involved in methadone maintenance programs. 

9

1The prepared statement of Dr. Burton with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 

48. 

We looked at 2001 and found that 21 percent were being treated 

in a methadone maintenance clinic, 21 percent had a prescription 

from a pain clinic, and 58 percent had no documented prescription. 

There are wide variations in individual tolerance for methadone. 

Therapeutic and fatal doses overlap. Doses that are safe in one person are not safe in another. 

Individual tolerance can be reduced during substance abuse 

treatment or if a person is in jail, for example. And so the risks 

are enhanced after the tolerance is reduced. 

Oxycodone is a synthetic opiate. It has been marketed since 1995 

in the long-acting form OxyContin, and it is taken both orally and 

by injection among drug abusers. It is listed as the cause of death 

in 7 percent of death certificates, and we find it in 17 percent of 

toxicology. 

Benzodiazepines, which are prescribed for anxiety, are found in 

about a third, 32 percent, of all Maine drug death toxicology tests. 

Among the toxicology tests of all the drug victims, 71 percent 

have one or more narcotics; 32 percent, one or more anti-anxiety 

drugs; and 37 percent, one or more antidepressants. 

Any attempt to address the problem and the risk they pose must 

be comprehensive. Clearly, electronic prescription monitoring systems are necessary, but experience with these programs nationally 

and internationally shows that real-time technologically-advanced 

systems are needed to provide immediate information to prescribers and pharmacies at the point of service. 

Research is needed to develop more sensitive and sophisticated 

practice guidelines with practitioners. Last, medical and law enforcement need expanded resources to handle the investigation 

needs. 

Thank you once again for the opportunity to bring this to your 

attention. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Dr. Sorg. Dr. Burton. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN H. BURTON, M.D.,1 MEDICAL DIRECTOR, 

MAINE EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, MAINE MEDICAL CENTER 

Dr. BURTON. Thank you very much. As you indicated, I am an 

emergency physician at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, 

as well as the medical director for Maine Emergency Medical Services for the last 4 years. 

Senator Sununu and Chairman Collins, about 15 months ago I 

was working in the emergency department, a usual Thursday, and 

a 16-year-old girl was brought into the emergency department at 

Maine Medical Center by her parents, and her story was that she 

was hooked on heroin and had been hooked on heroin for about 2 

weeks. 

Now, the way that she became hooked on heroin was 6 months 

earlier she started using OxyContin recreationally and she was 

purchasing that at her school. 

10

After about 51⁄2 months she was unable to obtain her OxyContin 

and because she had a craving and a need, she progressed on to 

intravenous heroin abuse. 

She came into our emergency department, and we were able to 

connect her to rehabilitation. I do not know whether she was rehabilitated successfully, but as you know, the number of stories of rehabilitation are not too optimistic for that particular substance 

abuse. 

The second case I will tell you about was about 3 months after 

that. At a Saturday high school party in the greater Portland area 

there were three young men at the party, and as not uncommon 

for young males at a high school party, they were experimenting 

with alcohol, they were doing shots of beer. 

What was uncommon about it, though, was that they were mixing their alcohol with shots of methadone. How they obtained the 

methadone, I am not really sure, but they obtained the methadone 

and were mixing it in as a poly substance. 

About an hour later EMS providers were called to the scene. One 

of these individuals had problems breathing and was significantly 

impaired in terms of the level of conscious side effects of methadone. 

All three of these people were brought into our emergency department. One young man who was not breathing at the scene was 

treated with Naloxone. It was a close call for all of them. The other 

two, it was a pretty close call as well. Ultimately, after a multihour period, they were discharged. 

About 3 months following that there was a patient at another 

emergency department—one of my colleagues in western Maine relayed this—and this was a 23-year-old man who went to a house 

party. He was not an intravenous drug abuser, had no narcotic 

drug abuse history from what I was told by some of my colleagues, 

and he was able to obtain some methadone while he was at the 

party. 

Now, the connection at the party was that the host of the party 

had a parent who was a methadone clinic patient on high doses. 

She apparently had been stockpiling her methadone from her takehome liberties. It was either through her opportunity that she created or the opportunity that her son created that this other fellow 

was at the party and ended up taking methadone and at about 2 

a.m. was found not breathing and unconscious on the party lawn. 

He was brought into the local emergency department and was 

pronounced dead upon his arrival at the hospital. 

Not all the patients end up being discharged. 

As has been indicated, the rise in observations that you see in 

emergency medical facilities, the emergency medical system, has 

really accelerated in the last 5 years. Based on activity it is probably about 4 percent per year for overdose patients. 

However, the drug-related and the narcotic-related activity is up 

on the order of 25 to 50 percent, particularly in the last year, 2002. 

I will tell you that that was quite motivating for myself, as well 

as the trauma surgeons at my hospital. It is a case that we have 

seen too often in the last year and a half. 

There were three individuals who crashed their car on the Maine 

Turnpike on a clear, bright sunny day at 11 o’clock on a Saturday. 

11

1The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 56. 

The story with them was they were all in the same vehicle, crashed 

the car into a bridge abutment, they were brought to the emergency department at Maine Medical Center. One of them had a 

fractured leg. It was a fairly high energy accident, so that the potential for severe injuries was great. 

They were lethargic; they had all been at a party. In talking with 

them, they had received their high-dose methadone at the clinic 

that morning, had taken a take-home dose either between two of 

them or all three of them—it was not clear to me whether two of 

them or all three of them—but they ingested their methadone in 

the parking lot, partied for an indeterminate amount of time and 

decided to drive home on the Maine Turnpike and then ultimately 

crashed the car. 

So I would indicate to you that the threat is not only to those 

who are using and abusing as we have seen before, methadone 

abuse, prescription drug abuse as you indicated, that then leads to 

other drugs in the narcotics, including heroin and methadone, and 

that threat is not only for those patients but also for those of us 

driving down the roads and working in those environments. 

The numbers currently support that for the year 2002 there is 

one life threatening overdose in the State of Maine from narcotics 

treated by emergency medical services every day. 

In the City of Portland that translates into one for every 7 days, 

so once per week. 

So I thank you very much for inviting me and thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Dr. Burton. Miss 

Johnson. 

TESTIMONY OF KIMBERLY JOHNSON,1 DIRECTOR, MAINE 

OFFICE OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. Chairman Collins, Senator Sununu, I 

am honored to be here with you today. 

The Office of Substance Abuse became aware of the growing increase in drug abuse early in the year 2000. At about the same 

time, law enforcement, particularly in Washington County, began 

noticing growth in trafficking across the Canadian border and experienced a growth in property crime due to abuse of OxyContin. 

If the medical community—particularly emergency rooms, law 

enforcement, poison control, and treatment field—had been collecting and sharing data at that time, we probably could have 

caught the problem at an earlier date and addressed it more effectively. 

As it was, there was not a comprehensive review of the data that 

existed until the Substance Abuse Services Commission released its 

report, ‘‘OxyContin: Maine’s Newest Epidemic,’’ in January 2002, 

and I do not know if you have gotten a copy of that. 

This report collated local medical and law enforcement data and 

reviewed national data to gain a sense of the scope of the problem. 

The results were alarming. 

At all measures, prescription drug abuse has grown by epidemic 

proportions. 

12

As we currently found out in 2002, it became clear that there 

was a dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths chiefly in the City 

of Portland. The medical examiner’s office began their review. 

At the same time, a research team from Yale University headed 

by Dr. Robert Heimer began a naturalistic study of drug abuse in 

Portland and in Washington County. 

While they have not yet published the data, preliminary data 

that the team has shared with us indicates that of the 238 opiate 

users interviewed in Portland, 25 percent use heroin the most and 

the remainder used prescription narcotics the most. 

Interestingly, despite the attention that has been drawn to methadone, it does not appear to be a very popular drug among the 

interviewees in the Yale study. 

Twenty-five percent of the sample had used it at some point but 

it was not a preferred drug for most and was used primarily to 

stave off withdrawal symptoms. 

Of the methadone used, half was reported to be obtained for the 

treatment of pain and half had come from substance abuse treatment clinics. 

Historically there has been very little opiate abuse in Maine, and 

there has been very little methadone treatment. 

But by 2001 there was a strong demand for more treatment, and 

the client population at the existing programs had grown dramatically. 

In the span of 2 years the total methadone treatment population 

went from a stable population of 300 people to the current number, 

1,600, and there is still unmet demand. 

We believe that the recent problems with diversion and abuse of 

methadone have to do with the rapid growth and need for treatment, as well as the relative naivete of the drug-using population 

in Maine. 

Drug users did not seem to be aware of the pharmaceutical qualities of methadone and did not distinguish it from other opiates that 

they were abusing. They did not understand that it was slow acting 

as well as long acting. They attempted to inject it and they took 

repeated doses in order to get high. 

In August we reported our concerns with methadone abuse to the 

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, which, as you know, is one 

of the centers in the Substance Abuse, Mental Health Services Authority under the Department of Health and Human Services. 

CSAT offered technical assistance and help developing and funding public education efforts. We found them to be very responsive 

to State needs and helpful regarding this issue. 

As CSAT heard from other States where methadone was being 

abused, they called together a working group of national experts 

and people from the various HHS offices to look at the etiology of 

the growth in methadone abuse and develop a response. 

The meetings which took place this spring—both Marcella and I 

attended—brought together data from a variety of sources and 

what became clear is that the overdose death issue is more complicated than you will find in the press reports. 

First of all, there has been a large increase in the use of methadone to treat pain, while the growth of methadone substance abuse 

treatment nationally has been moderate. 

13

The locales that seem to have developed methadone abuse problems are places where it has been a very relatively unknown drug, 

and there is an inexperienced drug-using population, just as we 

have seen in Maine. 

In my opinion, the switch of oversight of methadone treatment 

from the FDA to SAMHSA is coincidental to the growth in misuse 

of methadone. 

Growth of misuse of methadone has come from increased availability as it grows as a pain treatment and out of the desperation 

of drug addicts that cannot obtain their drug of choice or access appropriate treatment. 

Chairman Collins, you mentioned that there was a tragedy of 

under treatment of pain, and I will add to that that it is tragic how 

much we under treat addiction as well. 

Given our experience over the past 3 years, I would make a number of recommendations for addressing the problem of prescription 

drug abuse and preventing or providing early intervention to other 

emerging drug problems. 

I believe that having the ability to share data across various systems that deal with drug abuse is critical. I really believe that if 

OSA had had better data sooner, we could have stopped this problem before it became epidemic. 

We have begun working with the State Bureau of Health to follow a National Institute of Drug Abuse protocol for regular data 

sharing across systems. Nationally the DAWN network provides a 

similar tool, but it is only available to urban areas. 

CSAT’s response to the methadone overdose issue is another 

good example of data sharing that could and should happen on a 

regular basis. 

Maine finally passed a bill creating an electronic prescription 

monitoring program, which you have already heard about today, 

and I would like to say I think it is a critical tool and we appreciate 

the Department of Justice having funding for that and hope we can 

benefit. 

I also think that medical providers must receive better training 

in addictions. Most providers do not even ask questions about alcohol consumption, let alone drug use. They are not adept at recognizing the signs of substance abuse and do not know what to do 

when they have a patient with addictive disorders. 

Many are very misinformed about appropriate treatment protocol. 

Providers that treat pain should learn how to appropriately withdraw a person who has become physically dependent on prescription narcotics. Many of the people now treated in addiction clinics 

began as legitimate pain patients. 

First of all, medical personnel rarely screen for susceptibility to 

addictive disorders prior to prescribing potentially addictive medications. 

Second, they often do not handle a patient’s growing tolerance to 

a medication well, interpreting their tolerance as drug seeking or 

addictive behavior. 

Finally, medical staff need to learn how to appropriately withdraw patients from medications to which they have developed tolerance and physical dependence, which is not necessarily addiction. 

14

For many patients, their addictive behavior began when their 

need for pain medication was over, but their uncomfortable, even 

painful withdrawal from their prescribed medication led them to 

seek other sources of relief which eventually led to the cycle of addiction that we all know of. 

I am concerned with current marketing practices. While Purdue 

Pharma has been chastised for its aggressive marketing practices, 

I am less concerned about marketing to prescribers who should 

know better through training and experience and more concerned 

about direct to consumer marketing. 

Scheduled drugs are not marketed directly to consumers, but everything else is. When I sit and watch TV with my teenage daughter, I am amazed to see the quantity of prescription drugs advertised. They all have the same format, which is to make you think 

that symptoms of indigestion, PMS, or sadness may in fact be a serious disease for which medication is necessary. 

In my opinion, these ads have created a sense of urgency about 

every medical symptom and have presented the solution as taking 

a pill. The pills are attractive, the side effects are described as 

mild, and the need as serious. 

Our current generation of adolescents was raised watching these 

and at the same time they have been watching ads about the dangers of illegal drugs. 

I do not think it should come as any surprise that they perceive 

pharmaceuticals as a safe and effective high. The industry practice 

is relatively new and only predates the growth in abuse of prescription drugs by a few years, which helps to confirm the connection 

in my mind. 

We cannot restrict type and placement of commercial speech and 

things that we talk about, but I believe that we should address this 

new practice by pharmaceutical companies as it has created the social climate that has made prescription drug abuse inevitable. 

Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Miss Johnson. 

Let me start with a point that you were getting to at the end of 

your statement and that is, do you think we need an educational 

campaign to alert people to the dangers of prescription drugs? 

Is it your belief that individuals who would never think of trying 

heroin or cocaine somehow think that it is safe to experiment with 

prescription drugs which may be equally addictive and equally 

powerful? 

Is there a disconnect in the public’s mind in looking at prescription drugs versus illegal drugs? 

Ms. JOHNSON. I think absolutely there is. It is not just drug 

abusers that we are talking about. If you think about the general 

population, maybe people that you know, I cannot tell you how 

many times—I am terrified of flying—I can count how many times 

people have said, well, you want a Xanax? I have a Valium. It is 

a very common practice to share your medication. I think that people do not even think of that as abuse. 

I think parents, in particular, do not think about what is in their 

medicine cabinet. They are pretty careful about watching the alcohol and watching for symptoms of illegal drugs, but parents, grandparents, do not think about the pain medication that might be 2 

15

1The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 82. 

years old sitting in the medicine cabinet, and I have heard anecdotes of kids going to parties and they all bring something from a 

family medicine cabinet and dump it into a bowl. That is the evening’s entertainment, popping pills. 

I think maybe we need more public education about the risks 

and more professional education about the risks of prescription 

drugs. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Greenwald, you made a very important 

point and that is the study that you and Dr. Sorg conducted 

showed that the abuse of prescription drugs was a problem in every 

single county in Maine. It was not confined to Portland, although 

you said that Cumberland County was even higher than proportionate of population, but you found overdose deaths in every county; is that correct? 

Dr. GREENWALD. That is correct. 

Chairman COLLINS. Did you find that particular drugs were in 

particular counties? Were there any patterns as far as the kind of 

abuse that is occurring in rural versus urban areas of the State? 

Dr. GREENWALD. Actually, when we looked at the drugs, they 

seemed to be fairly evenly distributed throughout; and methadone, 

heroin, and oxycodone were really in all of the counties in varying 

numbers. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Sorg, your study demonstrates just how 

rapidly the drug problem in Maine has grown. If you look at the 

chart,1 it is really an exponential growth in the abuse and consequent death from prescription drug overdoses. 

One of the facts in the report that surprised me the most was 

that Maine’s problem appears to be more severe than in other parts 

of New England. For example, Maine’s death rate per 100,000 from 

opiate abuse has almost quadrupled since 1997, while Connecticut, 

for example, has remained basically flat. 

Why do you think our State has been hit so hard by this epidemic? 

Dr. SORG. First of all, I think it is something that is characteristic of rural areas right now, and it is not just the State of 

Maine that has experienced this. 

Second, I think that—as Ms. Johnson mentioned—it is a factor 

with respect to the experience of the users. 

In Connecticut, for example, there has been a lot of experience 

with opiates going back 30 years. In Maine, not so. It is a naive 

population. The population does not have a lot of experience. 

The other part I would like to mention is that it may be related 

to economic conditions and a way of making money. In some cases 

that may have increased due to the marketing of prescription 

drugs. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Burton, you have estimated that up to 

75 percent of the drug-related emergency room encounters that you 

have seen involve methadone. 

Could you explain to us why it is so easy to overdose on methadone so that we have a greater understanding. 

16

Dr. BURTON. I think a number of cases are where I see people 

who are not used to using narcotics. They think it is like popping 

a pill. 

One of the problems is that methadone is frequently dispensed 

in the Portland area as a liquid formula, so it is real hard to get 

a sense of how much is more than enough. It is not just a pill. 

So instead of popping a small dose in a pill that probably would 

not hurt anybody, though that is still not a good idea, they end up 

taking this unknown quantity of liquid and they come in unconscious. These are people who are not used to this. 

Even though the people who are not used to using this drug, for 

some reason—take interest in it, the availability, the mystique, or 

whatever it is—they have become addicted. 

Chairman COLLINS. Is it slow acting also so that the person taking it may take more to try to get a more powerful high and not 

understanding it is going to depress breathing? Is that a factor? 

Dr. BURTON. That is certainly a factor. If they start taking extra 

doses because they did not get high from the last one, it is slow 

acting. 

What is kind of unique about the motor vehicle crashes that we 

have seen as trauma surgeons and emergency physicians at my 

hospital is that we have seen a tremendous number of methadoneimpaired patients coming in from motor vehicle crashes where they 

have been driving. 

That is not supposed to happen because the drug takes a while 

to kick in, and so by the time they have driven home, the drug 

kicks in, particularly for someone who is taking a standard dose 

may lead to a car crash. 

So it makes many of us wonder whether the crashes that we are 

seeing are again because of people using extraordinary high doses 

in excess of 200 milligrams—it is very common in high doses—if 

that creates more opportunity for impairment or if that just creates 

more opportunity to divert it to people who then utilize it and drive 

impaired by it. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Dr. Sorg, I want to go back to a statement that you made in your 

testimony and make sure that I understand it. 

You said in looking at individuals who had died from methadone 

toxicity that 21 percent were being treated in a methadone maintenance clinic, 21 percent had a prescription from a pain clinic, and 

58 percent had no documented prescription. 

Does that mean that those 58 percent obviously got methadone 

from illegal sources? I just want to make sure I understand what 

you are saying. 

Dr. SORG. That is our understanding, too. The sample size is 

small, so the numbers may not be precise. 

But certainly we do call the few clinic that are around and make 

sure that they are not patients with those clinics. We can rule that 

out. 

We cannot rule out that somebody got it from a clinic out of 

State. But other than that, the 58 percent are probably obtaining 

it from illegal sources. 

17

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Burton, based on your experience, do you 

believe that most of the methadone that has been diverted is coming from prescriptions for pain relief or from addiction clinics? 

Dr. BURTON. I would say—I would be careful passing an opinion 

on that. We have seen a lot of both. 

There has certainly been a lot of physicians who prescribe methadone to control pain, it is fairly common. Actually, we have seen 

those patients. 

However, in the last 2 years in my personal experience the numbers seem much more weighted toward those being treated from a 

methadone clinic, I think because they are given those higher doses 

and large quantities. 

Chairman COLLINS. Let me follow up with you on the issue of 

high-dose methadone treatment. 

You identified two problems in your statement, first, that it may 

lead to an increased risk of diversion and second, that it may lead 

to greater side effects, you described the automobile accident, for 

example, as an indication of that. 

In your personal view do you believe that high-dose methadone 

treatment needs to be more closely regulated? Did the Federal Government make a mistake in expanding both the amount that a patient could take home from a clinic from 6 days to 31 days—in 

some cases—but also in approving megadoses that are getting 

wider acceptance but not used to be a standard treatment? 

Dr. BURTON. I am an emergency physician, I am not a specialist 

in drug treatment. 

However, I can tell you that I have read a large number of studies that seem to prove the wisdom of high-dose methadone. 

What those studies do is they look at the success of patients in 

the programs when you drive their dosing to higher levels and that 

keeps them in the program. 

So those individual patients do well. I would ask if anyone has 

ever seen a study that has simultaneously been described, during 

the time period studied, diversion rates, accident rates, emergency 

department visits, any marker that you could show of diversion. 

You are not going to publish that in the study. You only want 

to show a patient’s success and how it did for them. 

So my point is that I believe that in those studies and in that 

data there has been a large story that is not told. And I believe 

that part of that story is that it creates tremendous opportunity for 

diversion, but also if you couple that with a take-home program of 

1 week or 1 month at high dose, it is a tremendous opportunity to 

stock up methadone. Many of these patients have stockup up for 

a rainy day for when they are feeling really bad or down, so they 

are just keeping a stash. 

So my personal opinion is yes, it needs to be reviewed, it needs 

to be revisited with a particular emphasis on what is the effect to 

the community. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Greenwald, you said in your statement—

and you are absolutely right—that if we are going to tackle this 

problem, we need a multi-pronged approach. 

My last question to the panel before I turn to Senator Sununu 

is to ask each of you: If you had one recommendation for the Committee on what needs to be done to make a difference in tackling 

18

this terrible epidemic of drug abuse, what would your recommendation be? 

And I realize this may be something at the State level, Federal 

level, locally, etc., but whatever it is. Dr. Greenwald. 

Dr. GREENWALD. Actually, I think my recommendation would 

cover many of those different levels. One of the things that I see 

as the chief medical examiner when patients come to our office is 

that many of the patients come in with literally bags of prescription drugs. 

So I think that a point that Dr. Sorg made is that we need to 

have research in good pain management and education for the physicians prescribing so that they can work with their pain patients 

in realizing how to best treat the patients without ending up having the patients have access to large numbers of different medications. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Sorg. 

Dr. SORG. I would agree with Dr. Greenwald, of course, but I also 

think that information for the providers that might come from a 

prescription monitoring program is important, and I think that information needs to be available at the point of writing the prescription. 

It needs to be a real-time system and such a system is much 

more expensive. I think the decisionmaking process is part of the 

key. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Burton. 

Dr. BURTON. I have to think about in the last 7 months, there 

has been a number of us who believe that the numbers are down. 

I do not have data showing that, it is not zero. 

I had two heroin patients in the last 3 days in the emergency department. One of these was a young woman that was dropped off 

at the door. 

But I think the numbers are down and I think the reason why 

the numbers are down, if indeed they are, is largely to the efforts 

of people like Dr. Sorg, Dr. Greenwald, and Ms. Johnson and their 

efforts to include the communication and the willingness of the law 

enforcement community to get into discussion and also the addiction community, the owners of methadone clinics, and the representatives of the end users who sit at the same table and have 

a discussion and open the doors that when we see diversion occur 

that it is OK to then contact someone in these other areas to notify 

them of this so we can make sure that we are monitoring these 

practices and activities. 

The problem is it is a piece of that pie and each group would 

have a different piece of that pie. 

My one wish would be that we would have some process that 

would enable us to indicate when we see these patients—particularly allow us to do that on the medical side without getting sued 

or violating the patients’ rights, which are important, but there are 

elements that we could put in there. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I think my colleagues have said it all. Better information, the ability to share information, and that includes a prescription monitoring program that includes all of the data that we 

19

all collect and sharing that, and better physician provider education and public education. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much. Senator Sununu. 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you, Chairman Collins. 

Dr. Greenwald, I know that when you go into a research project 

you do your utmost to not have any preconceived ideas of how the 

data might come out, what it might show, but is there anything in 

particular that you can point to in your study that you found surprising or counterintuitive? 

Dr. GREENWALD. I do not know if it was counterintuitive. We 

knew that we were seeing increases in heroin deaths, but I think 

that the thing that surprised me the most, perhaps because of publicity that was around methadone at the time that we did the 

study, but was the numbers of actual heroin deaths in the State 

of Maine. I did not expect to see those numbers. 

Senator SUNUNU. And you mentioned that the preliminary 

data—I guess about a half a year’s data now—2003 shows a decline? 

How great a decline and what are the reasons? 

Dr. GREENWALD. Well, I can give you some ideas on that. We had 

126 accidental overdoses in 2002, and it looks like the numbers will 

be down to about 100 if the numbers hold in 2003. 

Again, we are still very early in looking at those numbers. I 

think that all of the issues that were mentioned, particularly the 

communication and attention and scrutiny by the clinics and by 

law enforcement, I definitely have seen a difference in our deaths; 

and when investigation is performed, we are hearing much earlier 

about the concept of diversion in the deaths, so I think that law 

enforcement is looking at these much more closely now. 

Senator SUNUNU. Dr. Burton, are the admittance numbers anecdotal evidence comporting with those numbers? In other words, are 

you seeing a modest decline in numbers of admittance? 

Dr. BURTON. I have not seen any numbers from 2003 either from 

health care emergency medical services or in hospital admission 

data. 

Senator SUNUNU. Are numbers tracked by emergency room services? Are they statewide or regionally? 

Dr. BURTON. Part of the problem is that there has been no way 

to track this. One of the things that I point out to people is that 

if your daughter—I do not know that you have a daughter—if she 

was at a party and someone shot her in the foot just playing 

around and she was brought into the emergency department, I 

would have to report that. It is required of me to report. 

Senator SUNUNU. Required by the State——

Dr. BURTON. By the State. However, if someone decided to give 

her a large dose of methadone and she became blue and was 

brought in by EMS providers, I cannot report that and to the contrary I would be discouraged because of confidentiality surrounding 

her rights as an individual patient. 

In young people, when you see a case like that you cannot engage—or you have to seek an attorney’s opinion before you can either get it into a database somewhere or contact a law enforcement 

official just to let them know this happened and not identify the 

patient. 

20

We do not have any means in the health care system at the hospital level to track it. 

Senator SUNUNU. Ms. Johnson, you mentioned the importance of 

data sharing and information sharing. 

Have you seen these same issues of confidentiality would cause 

problems and improving a system for data sharing? 

Ms. JOHNSON. It is very difficult to share data or information on 

an individual client. It really is not that difficult to share aggregate 

data. 

Some of the data is missing. We are actually working with the 

Maine Medical Center and Eastern Maine Medical Center in developing a system that collects infectious disease data, but we are still 

looking at adding drug abuse data to that system. So missing data 

is part of the issue. 

Senator SUNUNU. Dr. Burton, did those same obstacles make it 

difficult to identify—to establish firm statistics on the number of 

admittances who were driving under the influence, the traffic accidents for 2000, or fatalities due to the prescription drug abuse? 

Dr. BURTON. I would say yes and no. Yes, the same issues apply 

with patient confidentiality. So then to communicate that to law 

enforcement or a database is problematic. 

On the other hand, no because we have already thought through 

that about 10 years ago and there was a number of ways and some 

tracking is to follow that data. There are probably ways we can 

query that because they have worked through that. 

Senator SUNUNU. Ms. Johnson, with the opportunity to provide 

assistance in a clinic using greater doses, so-called megadoses and 

greater take-home periods from 6 to 31 days, to what extent is that 

being utilized or taken advantage of? And to what extent have you 

seen that exacerbated? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Current practice in addiction treatment with 

methadone is similar to the current practice in terms of pain treatment where we have learned that over the years we have under 

treated it. 

The dosages that were considered acceptable in years past really 

are considered now to be under treatment for those patients. 

I know the dosage issue is controversial in Maine, but nationally 

it is pretty much accepted practice. We have a handful of a very 

small number of patients in Maine who have very high doses, over 

400 milligrams. 

I get a list of some of those people. So I am less concerned about 

that. 

The take-home—the ability to take home more than a week’s 

worth of medication—is really an issue to address how this interferes with people’s abilities to live a normal life. 

That part of treatment is trying to get people to become responsible and lead normal productive lives like the rest of us. And having to go to pick up your medication every week interferes with 

that, particularly in a rural State. 

We have people up in Calais driving to Portland 5 hours away 

to get medication. Some of them are doing that daily now. 

People who have those kinds of long take-home privileges are 

people that have been in treatment for a long time and they are 

given strong education of their ability to have that responsibility. 

21

There are eight criteria that they have to meet in order to have 

that. 

What I do think about the problem in Maine is that in Portland 

the two clinics were only open 6 days a week, so everyone got one 

take-home dose a week. 

It was really at the clinic’s recommendation and we are changing 

the State regulation to reflect that, that it is going to be required 

to be open 7 days a week so that you do not come in Wednesday 

as a new patient and then Saturday get a separate dose to take 

home. 

My conversations with the Maine DEA have indicated that the 

issue of liquid methadone, the clinic methadone, was primarily single dose and it was probably found in those patients relatively 

early on in their treatment. 

They should not have had take-home privileges but did because 

the clinics were open 6 days a week. I suspect that since that 

change last summer, that has had an effect on the reduction and 

some of the problems that we have seen. 

Senator SUNUNU. What percentage of clients are taking medication—are given the 31-day—I guess the 31-day privilege is new? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Very few. Actually, my office has to approve it. 

There are, I think, fewer than 20 patients in the State that have 

privileges that are that long. Most are under 2 weeks, so except for 

that handful, they are all under 2 weeks and most are even shorter 

than that. 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator Sununu. I want to thank 

this panel very much for being with us this morning. We will put 

your full statements that you provided into the hearing record. 

Thank you very much. 

I would now like to call forward our second panel where we will 

get the views of law enforcement officers who see the drug problems from several angles. They are on the front lines of the battle 

against drug traffickers, they deal with the explosion in property 

crime and violence that results from drug dealing and abuse, and 

they are often first on the scene when the abuse turns to overdose. 

We are very fortunate today to have three highly experienced officers with perspectives that range from Maine’s largest city to 

some of the most rural counties. 

Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood is a highly decorated police officer with 38 years of experience. He has dealt with the preponderance of methadone overdoses in Maine’s largest city. We 

very much appreciate his driving up from Portland to be with us 

today. 

Lieutenant Michael Riggs of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. He’s one of the most experienced drug investigators in 

Maine. 

His county in easternmost Maine is among the first rural regions 

in the Nation to experience widespread prescription drug abuse 

and it remains, unfortunately, one of the hardest hit. 

Detective Sergeant Jason Pease of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s 

Department has lead successful investigations in a variety of drug 

diversion schemes including large-scale doctor shopping rings. 

22

1The prepared statement of Chief Chitwood appears in the Appendix on page 60. 

His county, in the State’s mid-coast region, has faced both the 

rural prescription drug phenomenon as well as the urban illicit 

drug trade. 

We very much appreciate the three of you being here. 

Before I call on Chief Chitwood, I just want to let everyone know, 

because I do not think I made the point clearly to the previous 

panel, that according to the most recent available data from the 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Maine substance 

abuse admissions rates for all opiates other than heroin is not only 

more than six times the national average, but it is the highest in 

the Nation. So we really do have a serious problem that we are 

dealing with. 

Chief Chitwood, thank you for being here today, and I will start 

with you. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL J. CHITWOOD,1 CHIEF OF POLICE, 

PORTLAND, MAINE 

Chief CHITWOOD. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Senator 

Sununu. 

I would like to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to be 

here. I am here to discuss an issue that I have seen grow into epidemic proportions over the last several years. 

Methadone abuse is affecting people in our communities in every 

county of the State. Statistics are dire and it is imperative that 

steps are taken to combat this rapidly growing problem. 

Over the last 5 years, as you have already heard statistics from 

other groups, there has been a four-fold increase in drug deaths in 

Maine. 

In the City of Portland and Cumberland County, methadone was 

a causation factor in at least 30 deaths in 2003 according to the 

State medical examiner. This rise in deaths is due mainly to accidental overdoses. 

What I find most deplorable and tragic is the lives that have 

been destroyed on methadone. Over the past several months I have 

received numerous calls and letters from people who have lost 

loved ones due to methadone and who are desperate for help. 

A woman who is present in the room today, Linda Nash, called 

me recently and shared with me a horrific story of how she lost her 

21-year-old daughter Kelly due to methadone overdose. 

Her daughter Kelly was seeking treatment for heroin addiction, 

and her mother watched as her methadone doses were increased 

steadily by a local clinic from 40 to 110 to 210 milligrams of methadone daily. 

Concerned, her mother tried to speak with someone at the clinic 

but she felt as though her distress fell on deaf ears. At this high 

dosage her daughter became sluggish and ill. She fell asleep at the 

wheel of the car and was involved in several accidents. 

The mother described Kelly as so constantly inebriated by methadone that she forgot when she took her last dosage until she took 

too much and died. Kelly left behind a baby boy. 

23

What I would like to share is I would like to give a quick overview of how easy it is to hoard methadone from the clinics in the 

greater Portland area. 

Here are 13 vials of take-home methadone that were prescribed 

to a 22-year-old who was an admitted heroin addict and while on 

the methadone program was making weekly trips to Massachusetts 

for his heroin. 

The scripts were from one of our local clinics, The Discovery 

House, in South Portland, Maine. He was entrusted with takehome doses of methadone, it was hoarded and packaged for sale. 

He sold his take-home methadone to support his heroin habit. 

The methadone in this case was seized by a tip by an informant 

and a search of his home. 

The second vial is a vial that the label has been taken off. Again, 

it is 330 milligrams of methadone prescribed by another local clinic, CAP Quality Care. 

Both of these cases have been settled, and that is why I am allowed to bring these before you—adjudicated, I am sorry. 

In this particular case, George Higgins was recently sentenced 

for supplying or furnishing methadone to a young man who subsequently died as a result of the methadone that was supplied to 

him. Higgins was again on take-home methadone and during the 

course of a party, Higgins gave this dosage to a gentleman who 

died on August 31, 2002. 

Again, another example of how easy it is. There are probably 

hundreds of examples statewide. 

I have heard multiple tragic stories like this going on and feel 

helpless because we have two for-profit methadone clinics dispensing this drug without, in my opinion, adequate oversight. 

The very nature of for-profit clinics creates incentives to keep 

people on methadone or stretch out the amount of time they are 

taking it and being weaned from it. 

Furthermore, the clinics are sending people home with methadone and minimal counseling and education. Even someone with a 

criminal history can be allowed take-home methadone. Granted, 

not all methadone users have a criminal history, but any social deviant with a history of breaking laws and using illicit drugs should 

not be entrusted to handle a powerful drug responsibly. 

This is not to say that criminals who are addicted do not deserve 

the treatment, they absolutely do. However, the treatment should 

be administered at a clinic under close supervision. The result of 

this current ‘‘drive-through-window’’ approach to methadone is that 

the drug is being diverted, misused, and causing people to die at 

alarming rates. 

Based on my experience there is no doubt in my mind that State 

and Federal regulations pertaining to dispensation of methadone 

must be strengthened. The Federal guidelines, which were designed to make methadone treatment more accessible—for example, take-home doses—have created a crisis. 

People are taking the methadone home but in too many cases 

they are selling it or letting their friends take it. As you know, 

methadone does not create a high like other drugs. The result is 

that you have people mixing alcohol and other drugs at a party and 

somebody gives them some methadone. Thinking that they are 

24

going to get high as with other drugs, they take it and end up either dead or unconscious. 

Currently the State Office of Substance Abuse, in my opinion, is 

not doing enough to monitor, evaluate, or intervene on this deadly 

trend. In fact, if anything, I feel that they have contributed to the 

problem by spending $24,000 on radio ads promoting methadone 

use like it is the cure-all, like it is going to cure opiate addiction. 

These funds could have been better used through education rehabilitation and enforcement. 

Another way that methadone is being used is through prescription drug diversion. The methadone being abused appears to be 

tablets prescribed for pain. These are sold or sometimes given to 

addicts by people who have stolen from patients, in some cases, by 

patients themselves. Addicts either swallow the tablets or grind 

them into powder that can be inhaled or turned into liquid and injected. 

Even though this is a lesser problem in Maine, it is something 

that we need to watch carefully. I am hopeful that the prescription 

drug monitoring bill that was passed during the last legislative session will be a useful tool for getting health care providers informed 

and educated regarding patients with drug-seeking behaviors. 

While policy changes are imperative, they should be part of a 

comprehensive, coordinated approach. As you know, drug abuse is 

a complicated problem which will require a multi-faceted solution 

involving collaboration among diverse professions. 

A comprehensive approach should include several components: 

Law enforcement for control, public/professional education prevention, and treatment services. 

These components can be strengthened by policy changes and 

must be implemented in a systematic, coordinated manner 

throughout the State of Maine. 

First, resources must be available to ensure effective law enforcement. Drug enforcement agents enforce State and Federal drug 

laws and conduct comprehensive investigations into illegal use of 

methadone, methadone diversion, and other related crimes. 

The Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, MDEA, should have increased resources—both human and financial—to carry out its mission. 

Second, education is essential to the primary and the secondary 

prevention initiatives. Just as we have campaigns to educate people about the dangers of smoking, we need programs to teach people about the risks they are taking when they abuse methadone. 

Healthcare professionals must also receive education on this public health crisis so that they may become part of the solution. 

Third, comprehensive substance abuse treatment services, which 

offer wide-ranging programs based on best practices, must be highly accessible to those who need them. These services include 

medical treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other types of 

rehabilitation and recovery services. 

Treatment services should be integrated into comprehensive 

healthcare delivery systems and need to be responsive to the community. 

Currently there are deficiencies in each of the aforementioned 

areas. While the drug abuse problem is continuing to grow in 

25

1The prepared statement of Lt. Riggs appears in the Appendix on page 66. 

Maine, the number of drug enforcement officials is shrinking as 

part of the trend over the past decade. 

Budgetary restrictions have forced the MDEA from 76 agents in 

1992 with an approximate $2 million budget to just 34 today with 

a $1 million budget, and the drug problem has increased ten-fold. 

We cannot expect to see positive changes in the drug abuse problem in Maine if MDEA resources continue to dissipate. Moreover, 

there is no statewide coordinated approach to education. 

State officials need to work with multiple communities—medical, 

public health, education, law enforcement—to get the word out. 

Also, treatment services need to be integrated and the treatment 

community must collaborate with other stakeholders to ensure a 

sustainable solution and a reversal in the current trend. 

Chairman Collins, Senator Sununu, I implore you to use the information you have learned about this issue to craft legislation that 

will help solve the problem. 

I want to close by saying that I have been in law enforcement 

for 31 years. I spent the first 20 years in my career in a major 

urban city. I can tell you that in 1965 in the city of Philadelphia, 

methadone was introduced as the panacea to help cure opiate addiction. It did not work in 1966 and here we are in Maine in 2003, 

and I do not know that it is going to work here. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Chief. Lieutenant Riggs. 

TESTIMONY OF LT. MICHAEL RIGGS,1 WASHINGTON COUNTY 

SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT 

Lt. RIGGS. Good morning, Senator. Washington County was one 

of the first places in the country where OxyContin abuse exploded. 

A few years ago you started seeing national news stories about the 

‘‘hillbilly heroin’’ taking over rural areas. The impression was that 

one brand-name drug moved into these small towns and did all this 

damage. I would like to begin by telling you what actually happened. 

About 10 years ago we started finding stray pills on traffic stops 

and pat-down searches of somebody’s pockets. When we would ask 

them, ‘‘What is this?’’ they indicated Percocet or Darvocet or some 

small narcotic pill mixed with Tylenol or Ibuprofen or some prescription drug. 

We would ask, ‘‘what is this?’’ Well, the story was, I had a migraine today and my mother gave me two, and I only took one; or 

I had a toothache and my brother gave me one that his dentist 

gave him when he had a toothache. So they were let go, no big 

deal. 

And then our informants began finding it increasingly difficult to 

buy marijuana or cocaine or LSD. They would come out of the 

house and say, all the guy had was some pills. Sometimes they 

would not even buy them, they did not know what they were. They 

had not heard of them before. 

So those Percocets, Darvocets, Vicodins, and things, those are 

now called little ones. Those are just the little pills. We had to educate ourselves as to what it was and what it was doing to the peoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:53 Feb 06, 2004 Jkt 089040 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89040.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
26

ple that were addicted to it and how deeply rooted this addiction 

had become. 

In 1996 it started to be OxyContin and that just took over. But 

I do not believe that was their fault. The addiction was already 

deeply rooted within the community. 

It came to a point where my partner and I could not remember 

the last time we purchased marijuana, and we thought that was 

good until we were thinking about it and we realized that was bad 

because what actually happened was the need for marijuana or the 

preference for marijuana had dwindled, not gone away, because 

marijuana and an opiate addict usually do not mix. It is like giving 

a person with a broken leg an aspirin. It is not going to do them 

any good, so they do not use it. 

This realization changed the way that we investigated drug problems. Opiate addicts were a whole new world. We had to educate 

ourselves about the pills and the addicts. 

The more we lived with the addicts, the more we became aware 

of how powerful the addiction to opiates really is, and we have had 

to understand as much as we could without using the drugs ourselves. 

We had to learn new terminology, why they mix cocaine and the 

opiate together and it is called a ‘‘bell ringer.’’ We had to learn why 

the Canadians called it ‘‘Shake-n-Bake’’ and why they preferred it 

to the American variety, the reason being it was very water soluble. All you have to do is put the pill in the syringe, suck some 

water into it, shake it, and you are good to go. 

We had to make believers out of doctors, lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, employers, parents, and everyone in every walk of 

life. For a long time higher-ups in law enforcement would look at 

all the pills we were getting and ask why we could not buy any real 

dope. People finally started realizing this is real dope. This is the 

worst thing we have ever encountered. 

Informants were coming to us saying things like what they were 

seeing was making them sick and angry. One told us of a house 

he just left, an infant was in a car seat on the living room floor, 

and on the couch were two woman covered with a blanket and the 

two guys that lived there had gone after more pills. 

The house was cold, there was not any fuel for the furnace. The 

baby’s runny nose had dried on its face, they could not wash it because the water was frozen. 

Other addicts would tell us, I hate the stuff, I wish I never heard 

of it, and I hope you get it all, but they cannot help you because 

they might need a pill tomorrow. 

Another told us that the only time he had ever thought of committing suicide was the last time he was going through withdrawal. 

He said if he had had a gun, he would have shot himself. 

We knew of instances where kids would hold other kids down at 

parties and shoot them up because it was funny. 

One of our informants is dead now. His wife was driving too fast 

to get a pill. She is in prison now on unrelated charges and her 

kids are being raised by the grandparents and his house is being 

rented to college students. 

These are just a few examples of the damage this has done. 

27

1The prepared statement of Det. Sgt. Pease appears in the Appendix on page 70. 

For the economics of the whole thing, initially OxyContin sold on the streets for $1 a milligram. An addict could use 80 milligrams 

a day just to keep from getting sick, never mind getting high. How do you get $80 a day to support your habit? You lie to everyone you know, you steal everything you can, you max out all 

your credit cards, you do not pay any of your bills, you cancel your 

insurance on your car right after you register it because you need 

the refund. 

You get the clerk at the store to knowingly accept a bad check 

if you promise to give them some of the money. You sell your body, 

you sell your children’s clean urine to addicts being tested. 

After you have got some money, you fake an illness or injury and 

doctor shop until you get a prescription, and then you can tell your 

friends that you go to this doctor and tell him that you have these 

symptoms, he will give them a script. Maybe the friends will give 

you a pill or two in return. 

Or you can buy a few pills from the pharmacy tech who is smuggling pills out by tucking them in his socks. You might pay the doctor’s secretary to steal a script pad for you. 

You can read the obituaries and break into the family’s home 

while they are at the funeral. 

This is true; I am not making this up. You can wait for your 

neighborhood cancer patient to go to the doctor. You can break in 

and take his medication. 

Opiate addicts often have bad teeth. This is a blessing in disguise 

because if none of the above work, the emergency room doctor will 

give you a script until you get them fixed, which you have no intention of doing because you can do it again at another emergency 

room. 

In closing—I see my time is up—the border does pose an issue. 

One of the big issues is crossing the Canadian border and the Canadian exchange in money, the exchange rate. 

The number of pills coming across would be anybody’s guess, but one dealer told me that he had made a Canadian dealer $135,000 

in 2 months. 

Another dealer said he could take $5,000 to Canada today and 

in 2 days he would be out of pills and have $6,000. So all that money’s going across the border and nothing’s coming back. That is a 

big impact on the community. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Lieutenant. Detective 

Pease. 

TESTIMONY OF JASON PEASE,1 DETECTIVE SERGEANT, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION, LINCOLN COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT 

Det. Sgt. PEASE. Chairman Collins, Senator Sununu, I would like 

to thank you for the opportunity to speak for a few moments on 

the impact of the drug problem in the mid-coast area. 

My main focus is that of Lincoln County, but as you all know and 

have heard today, this is not a one-area problem. This is statewide. 

Lincoln County has had an increase of epidemic proportions in 

heroin and opiate-based prescription drugs over the past 5 years. 

28

The drug problems surrounding prescription drugs has far surpassed all other drugs. 

Over the past 5 years, we in Lincoln County and throughout the 

State of Maine have seen an increase in crime such as burglaries, 

robberies, thefts, overdoses, and even deaths because of the drug 

problem. 

Just to give you an example, 1999—excuse me, 2000 we had a 

local pharmacy in the town of Wiscasset where three gentlemen 

broke into that place by ripping the roof, physically climbing up on 

the roof of the business, taking a wrench and tearing apart the 

roof, and climbing down in. The only saving grace in this was that 

there was a radio alarm inside the pharmacy, but when interviewed and talked to about this, during and after the event, the 

only reason they were there was for prescription OxyContin. 

Since that time one of the subjects has been sent to a rehab in 

New Hampshire by his family. He spent half a year there, and 

after that he was released and overdosed in Manchester. 

Since being assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division of 

the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in 1999, I have handled numerous investigations into the theft of prescription pads from doctors’ 

offices, altering of prescriptions, forging of prescriptions, and I have 

even dealt with subjects that have been manufacturing prescriptions on their computers. 

It is a common occurrence in the mid-coast area. When I say 

mid-coast area, I am concentrating on northern Cumberland County, Sagadahoc County, Lincoln, and portions of Knox County. 

Subjects are going into doctors’ offices and while they are waiting 

for the doctor to come in or the doctor is out getting something for 

them, they are rummaging through the drawers and finding leftbehind prescription pads that are blank and already have the DEA 

number attached to it, so all they have to do is scribble on it and 

take it to a local pharmacy and get it filled. 

As I mentioned, we had a couple of cases where there were people taking prescriptions that they obtained and scanning them into 

their computer, changing the date and changing the location and 

being able to print those off to look exactly like those prescriptions 

given by the doctor, and they have been able to pass those successfully. 

At first we found the majority of prescription drug users and 

abusers started using the prescriptions because of illnesses, pain, 

or to wean themselves off of heroin. But now it has been found that 

many of the users and abusers are on prescriptions because of their 

ability to obtain the dose easier by going to the doctor. 

Where in the past heroin users and sellers were able to go to 

Massachusetts and buy the packet of heroin for $5 and return to 

Maine and sell it for $25 to $35 a packet, that is a pretty good profit margin, now they are able to go to their doctor and get a prescription for OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin and spend $25 and be 

able to turn around and make twice as much as they were spending on selling and buying the heroin. 

They are getting a price of approximately $1 a milligram on 

OxyContin at this point and it is costing them $40 to get the prescription filled and they are turning around and making about 

$250 on one bottle. 

29

Currently we are seeing OxyContin, hydrocodone, Fetynal patches, Xanax, methadone, and Loratab. These prescription drugs are 

all opiate derivatives which seem to be the ‘‘hook’’ for the person 

using and abusing. 

OxyContin has by far been the worst prescription abuse in the 

mid-coast area over the past few years of any prescription that contains opium or synthetic opium and is the drug of choice. 

We have experienced numerous instances where subjects from 

outside of Lincoln County were traveling to doctors in our area in 

order to get multiple prescriptions from those doctors. 

The subjects would travel to doctors in small towns such as 

Waldoboro, Damariscotta, and Wiscasset and visit a family medical 

office. The subjects were from areas like Brunswick, Augusta, and 

even, at some points, Portland. Again, Brunswick has two major 

hospitals, Parkview and Mid-Coast Hospital, and hundreds of doctors in that area, so they are choosing to come to the rural area 

because there is less knowledge of who is who in the town, and 

they are just coming in and moving into these little towns and are 

able to get those prescriptions filled. 

This is what is referred to as doctor shopping, and this again is 

not a local Lincoln County problem. This is a problem statewide. 

As you talked about, we have had successful cases involving doctor shopping where a specific incident, a couple coming from Brunswick and going throughout Lincoln County to the towns of 

Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Wiscasset, Damariscotta, and Waldoboro, these little towns getting at least one, if not two, prescriptions 

from different doctors in those towns. And then they were able to 

pass all those prescriptions successfully and even in some of those 

cases we have had them using the VA to accomplish the same goal. 

They are going to Togus to get their prescriptions filled also. 

In similar acts, when making, forging, or filling ‘‘doctor shopping’’ 

prescriptions, they are traveling to small local pharmacies. The 

reason for filling prescriptions in small pharmacies is they do not 

have the tracking system such as a Hannaford or a Rite-Aid does. 

Another problem we have noticed—Ms. Johnson kind of talked 

about this—is that the younger crowds are going into their parents’ 

or their grandparents’ or their family’s medicine cabinet and taking 

pills. Most of the time the prescriptions are pain pills, they are narcotics they are taking, but from time to time they are just taking 

any random pill and doing what she said, taking them to parties 

and emptying them into bowls. 

Another problem that we have seen is leftover prescriptions, family members giving other family members pain killers, as a mother 

giving her son her leftover Percocet because he has got a bad back 

and he does not have a prescription for it, but they are probably 

addicts. 

As we in law enforcement in Maine know, the United States is 

dealing with the dilemma of prescription drug abuse. If there was 

some method of linking all doctors and all pharmacies to one system of tracking prescription drugs to clients, it may assist in the 

fight against drug abuse. I know we talked about the drug program 

and the prescription program. 

30

There are such systems in place tracking motor vehicles, so I feel 

we can come up with an adequate system for the prescription drug 

problem. 

Again I would like to thank you for your time and I am willing 

to answer any questions that you may have. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Detective. 

I want to thank each of you for painting such a vivid picture to 

the Committee on the impact of drug abuse in your communities 

and on the people that you are serving. 

I also really appreciate your commitment to law enforcement. We 

are grateful for all that you are doing on the front line. 

Chief, let me start with you. First let me thank you very much 

for bringing the vials so that we could actually see what we are 

talking about when clinics are giving doses of methadone for their 

patients to take home. 

There has been dispute on whether or not the treatment clinics 

are a significant source of the methadone that is diverted and used. 

What is your judgment? Do you think that the majority of the 

diverted methadone does come from clinics? Or do you think that 

it is from pain prescriptions? What is your feeling on that? 

Chief CHITWOOD. In my opinion, in the City of Portland and in 

the greater Portland area, the majority of the diverted drugs are 

coming from the two clinics and have come from the two clinics. 

Here is a perfect example. One clinic, one patient, take-home 

methadone, hoarded it to sell it for heroin. In this particular case, 

this individual was given take-home methadone, he was a career 

criminal with a criminal record in three States, and they are entrusting him to take vials of 340 milligrams home, and he gave a 

fatal dose to his friend. 

That is where I see it. We very seldom see anything coming from 

a prescription. The prescription is usually in the pill form, and it 

is usually 10 milligrams. So we are not seeing that as a problem. 

All the diversion, all of the deaths, all the crime scenes where 

we go and investigate the deaths, there has been methadone involved in it, it is a vial, and usually the name is rubbed off the 

label of the vial. 

Chairman COLLINS. And do you see the trend toward megadoses 

of methadone for treatment purposes as contributing to the diversion? 

Chief CHITWOOD. I see it as a problem in this sense, and this is 

based on law enforcement experience. 

When you have somebody taking 400 and 500 milligrams of 

methadone, they are zombies. And I believe that that type of 

megadosage causes problems beyond the diversion problem. 

Inebriation on the highways include problems with being able to 

function as a human being and function normally, and I think that 

from that perspective it is a problem. 

How do you get somebody off of 400 to 500 milligrams of methadone? So now you have created craving. Does it do away with the 

cravings? Yes. But now they have the craving for methadone. 

These particular clinics are for-profit. How long are they going to take $80 to $100 a week from their client, especially if their client 

is a career criminal who has to steal, rob and pillage to survive? 

That is an issue. 

31

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Lieutenant Riggs, you have 

painted a very vivid picture of the impact of drug abuse on a rural 

county in increase in crime and destroying families. 

Could you elaborate on the issue of being on the Canadian border 

as Washington County is. Does that increase the chances for diversion of drugs? Are there Canadian sources that are contributing to 

the drug abuse problem in Washington County and the OxyContin 

problem in particular? 

Lt. RIGGS. Yes, ma’am. Oxycodone is smuggled into this country 

on a daily basis with a great deal of frequency. 

By walking the St. Croix river, they come across in body cavities, 

they come across in vehicles, they come across on jet skis. They 

come across about any way that you can imagine but rarely by air. 

The really ingenious efforts of the drug traffickers—one particular gentleman has an American fishing boat. He takes a little 

remote control boat into the Canadian shore, and the big boat does 

not touch the Canadian shore, and they run a little remote control 

boat into the Canadian land and it is picked up by his connection 

and brought back to the fishing boat, and he has never touched the 

Canadian shore. 

So diversion in Canada occurs by very organized groups of doctor 

shoppers that include everything from children to old people. 

That is brought all together to individual dealers and distributed 

from there across the borders into the State in fairly substantial 

quantities as a whole. 

One of the things that we rarely see is somebody coming across 

the border with a thousand pills. You see them coming across the 

border with 20 pills, 50 pills, but there are a dozen of those people 

a day coming across or more. 

So you are having an influx of hundreds of pills per day, at least, 

coming across the border. 

Chairman COLLINS. Is there any cooperative effort between 

Maine officials and Canadian officials underway to try to better detect and deter the transportation of these drugs? 

Lt. RIGGS. Yes, there is, and our Canadian counterparts are just 

as cooperative as they can be. 

We find the officers on the streets, whether it is people like myself or an MDEA officer or the drug unit or intelligence unit, we 

all cooperate with one another, we all share information the best 

that we can until guidelines and rules and regulations prohibit 

sharing of that information. 

When it gets into more in-depth investigations, a lot of material 

has to be cleared through Ottawa before we can even become privileged to it. That is a long process. 

Chairman COLLINS. I appreciate your identifying that area for 

us. 

Detective Pease, you talked about doctor shopping particularly in 

smaller communities where the local pharmacy is not going to have 

a sophisticated tracking system for prescriptions that might catch 

duplicative prescriptions for the same drug. 

Could you comment on the elements of an effective prescription 

tracking program—the State of Maine has recently passed a law as 

have some of the other States—do we need some sort of nationwide 

system in order to deal with doctor shopping? 

32

Det. Sgt. PEASE. Well, what little I know about nationwide, but 

I feel this is obviously a problem that is nationwide and we need 

to have something real-time. 

We need to have something so that when a doctor or a PA or 

somebody writes out a prescription for a person, they are able to 

pull that name up using an office computer into a central system 

that they can look and see if this person has gotten three prescriptions for oxy or methadone or whatever the medication may be, and 

then that would raise some suspicions. 

I think that would be beneficial to us. I realize that we have 

some issues of the client/doctor privilege, and we as law enforcement run into that quite frequently. 

The only time we can get around that is if we can show that it 

is a fraudulent prescription. In Maine State law there is a provision for law enforcement to obtain that information, but that is still 

very hard to do even when you present the physicians with that 

law. It is a hard sell because they do not want to believe that it 

is a fraudulent prescription. 

Back to the smaller pharmacies, in our area most of the pharmacies that are that small are owned or run by the different companies, but they are much smaller than a Hannaford or a Rite-Aid, 

so they do not have that ability to set up something. 

They are all for it and they try to keep tracking this information 

for us as much as they can without violating those patients’ rights. 

But when they start seeing people coming from Brunswick or 

Portland or Augusta all the way down to Waldoboro, Maine, they 

start to raise their eyebrows that something is going on here. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Sununu. 

Senator SUNUNU. Chief Chitwood, you expressed concern that in 

an urban area like Philadelphia you have seen problems with certain approaches to treatment or diversion of methadone and you 

talked about seeing some of those problems here. 

Can you come up with a more positive experience from your work 

in Philadelphia? Was there anything that you have seen here in 

Portland that you think is unique or uniquely effective in a rural 

area that might not work in an urban setting but something that 

we will need to focus on to try to address this problem in a rural 

setting? 

Chief CHITWOOD. I think that when you look at the opiate 

issue—for 10 years I have been telling people in Maine this is a 

problem that is going to be a crisis and here we are—if you are 

going to look at treatment, I believe there is a place in treatment 

for methadone, but it has to be a comprehensive program. 

To say that—and I call it a drive-by window—to say that, OK, 

you have a heroin problem or you have an opiate problem, we are 

going to give you 400 or 500 milligrams of methadone, and you are 

going to live life and everything is going to be fine, I think is having your head in the sand. 

I believe they need counseling. I believe that you need some type 

of daily collaborative approach between the patient and social 

workers, psychologists, and maybe methadone can be part of that 

treatment. 

33

I think that what we have seen—or what I have seen in the 

methadone history—years ago you had a window. You went up, you 

took it, and you walked out. But you went right back on the street. 

Now the thing is these megadoses. That is the ‘‘new technology, 

or new medical practice.’’ I believe it may work in some cases. 

But when you see the numbers of deaths, it is not working. But 

I believe we need a comprehensive program, and methadone may 

be a part of that initial program, but I do not believe that we are 

approaching it correctly. 

Senator SUNUNU. You indicated that a common prescription dose 

would be 10 milligrams? 

Chief CHITWOOD. I believe it is 10 milligrams. 

Senator SUNUNU. Just for comparison, how many milligrams are 

represented in the vials? 

Chief CHITWOOD. This is 340 milligrams. Some of these vials are 

60, and 45. 

Again, the young lady I spoke about, she was on a high dosage, 

210 milligrams, so you can see the difference. According to the 

medical people that I have talked to, the dose should be around 80, 

80 to 100 milligrams. 

Senator SUNUNU. Lt. Riggs, are there any specific changes or recommendations that you would want to make for the modification 

at the local or the State level or the Federal level to help you do 

your job better? 

Lt. RIGGS. Yes. One thing I wanted to touch on regarding the 

conversation about methadone is confidentiality. Confidentiality 

has got to be maintained, but changed. We cannot talk to doctors 

and be able to have doctors answer our questions. They cannot 

speak with us. It is very unproductive. 

I talked to my own doctor about other patients, he cannot discuss 

it with me. I’ll tell him, this one and this one and this one is selling 

it. I know that they are going to their doctor, I know what they 

are getting for medication, I know what they are on, and I know 

they are selling it on the side. 

On a much larger scale, law enforcement is being segregated 

from sharing vital information more and more all the time. 

A year ago I could pull pharmacy records; today I cannot because 

of the HIPAA laws. There is no way around that. They are segregating law enforcement more and more. Instead of easing the confidentiality and fostering communication, we are being shut out of 

the picture. 

Reviewing the narcotic tracking program in the State, the information to law enforcement is not part of that. I need it to more effectively do my job. It has become increasingly difficult to communicate and share information because of confidentiality. 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you all very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

Just one very quick question before I let you go. 

We talked about various recommendations this morning and we 

touched on systems such as tracking, treatment centers, better 

education, and the confidentiality. We talked about a more multifaceted approach. 

The one issue that has not come up that I want to ask you is 

whether we need tougher penalties. Lt. Riggs. 

34

1The prepared statement of Dr. Dimond with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 

72. 

Lt. RIGGS. Ma’am, if we were to actively enforce the laws that 

are already on the books, we would not have to be here today. That 

is my opinion. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Chief. 

Chief CHITWOOD. It is a matter of having people to enforce it. It 

has to be a multi-faceted approach. No one approach is going to 

solve this problem. It has to be enforcement, education, and rehabilitation. It is not going to work unless you have those three. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Detective. 

Detective Pease. Senator, I would like to agree with both of 

them. The guidelines and the law, the prosecution to enforce and 

our ability of having to fulfill the need for prosecution by building 

a strong and good case, and, most importantly, with the DA’s office 

and the AD’s office, we are able to build those stronger penalties 

or fulfill what we already have and it will work. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much. That is very helpful 

to get your honest view on that issue. 

I want to thank all three of you. All of you have come from long 

distances to be here today. It was extremely helpful, and thank you 

for your testimony. 

We are now going to hear from our final panel today. 

Dr. Richard Dimond is a retired Army physician with an extensive background in teaching and research. He retired in Southwest 

Harbor in 1994, and at the time was a very active member of the 

community. 

One of his most recent projects is as the organizer of a group of 

citizens who are very concerned about the drug problem in their 

midst. 

Barbara Royal is the administrative director of the Open Door 

Recovery Center in Ellsworth. This is an out-patient substance 

abuse treatment center. It is the only such facility in Hancock 

County, and as such it deals daily with the dramatic and increasing shift toward prescription drug abuse. 

We welcome both of you. 

Dr. Dimond, I am going ask that you go first. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD C. DIMOND,1 M.D., MOUNT DESERT 

ISLAND DRUG TASK FORCE 

Dr. DIMOND. Chairman Collins, Senator Sununu, thank you for 

the opportunity to testify on the increasing use of prescription 

drugs in Hancock County. 

Alcohol and drug abuse, including opiate drugs and drug-related 

crimes, are not new to Southwest Harbor, Mt. Desert Island—hereafter referred to as MDI—or Hancock County, but these problems 

have escalated exponentially over the last 4 or 5 years. 

By 1999 and 2000, many of us were becoming educated by the 

U.S. Attorney in Bangor about the sudden increase in overdose 

deaths in Penobscot and Washington Counties. We learned about 

prescription narcotics being used to supplement or substitute for 

heroin and how they have given rise to an industry characterized 

35

by drug-related burglaries, stealing and dealing, and doctor shopping to obtain prescriptions which were marketable by themselves. 

Particularly alarming were reports of overdose deaths occurring 

in individuals in their mid-20’s and addiction to both heroin and 

prescription narcotics being recognized in teenagers. 

About that time, several Southwest Harbor businesses, including 

our pharmacy and one of our two medical clinics, experienced 

breaks-ins and attempted or successful burglaries that fit the picture of drug-related crimes. 

Similar occurrences in Bar Harbor and an increasing concern 

about our adolescent population led to the formation of an MDI 

Task Force Education Committee in the fall of 2000 followed by 

two public forums about heroin and narcotic abuse in our area. 

Unfortunately, by the fall of 2001, it was clear that initial enthusiasm for the formation of a Task Force Against Drug Abuse on 

MDI had been short lived. 

Over the next year and a half, numerous arrests for possession 

of illicit drugs and/or drug trafficking were made, and the local 

press provided many reports of escalating drug abuse statewide 

and in our area. 

Most alarming, however, was the increased frequency with which 

members of the community found drug paraphernalia, such as syringes and needles, behind buildings, near dumpsters, in the street, 

and on their private property. 

Despite reporting such occurrences and other suspicious activities to our local police, citizens became increasingly frustrated because they saw little change and the situation seemed to be getting 

worse. Thus, explanations that a five-man police force is not 

equipped to do surveillance or drug-related investigative work, and 

that the State only had three drug enforcement agents covering the 

four counties in our area were of little comfort. 

Finally, a Southwest Harbor boat builder and fisherman stood up 

at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting on May 7 of this year holding 

a zip-lock plastic bag containing several syringes and needles found 

recently on his property and demanded that something be done. 

On May 29—3 weeks later—225 residents of MDI and neighboring communities gathered in Southwest Harbor with a panel of 

eight experts representing different professional disciplines to discuss drug abuse and drug trafficking. 

Emphasizing that there is no simple solution to these difficult 

problems, all panel members underscored the reality that only a 

multi-disciplinary approach, including effective education, treatment, law enforcement, and prevention strategies, is likely to make 

a significant difference. Nevertheless, residents were most outspoken about the immediate need for increased support from law 

enforcement. 

Consequently the audience became increasingly frustrated with 

State law enforcement officials who repeatedly explained that there 

were insufficient funds and manpower to assign a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agent to Hancock County in the foreseeable future. 

Subsequently, discussions were held between local police departments, the sheriff, the district attorney, the director of MDEA, and 

the county commissioner. As a result, the sheriff proposed formaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:53 Feb 06, 2004 Jkt 089040 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89040.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
36

tion of a county-wide drug enforcement team, the only one of its 

kind in the State, to be made up of three officers from local police 

departments who would be trained by MDEA and assigned permanently as MDEA agents in Hancock County with authority to enforce anti-drug laws statewide. 

The proposal was discussed at a public hearing in Ellsworth on 

July 22 and creates a real partnership between Hancock County 

and MDEA, between the county citizens and the State. The cost of this program is about $200,000 to hire three new police officers to replace the individuals assigned to the County Drug 

Enforcement Team. Although this means a further increase in 

county taxes, the proposal appeared to be supported by most of the 

individuals attending the hearing, as well as by more than 200 

residents of MDI and the Cranberry Isles. 

This proposal to strengthen investigative law enforcement in our 

area is the first step in what we hope will be a powerful community 

response that effectively interrupts the flow of drugs through 

Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert Island, and neighboring communities in Hancock, Penobscot, and Washington Counties. 

However, multiple other initiatives are needed as well, particularly in the areas of education, treatment, and prevention. 

As is true of many rural States, Maine’s resources for treatment 

of alcohol and opiate addiction are woefully inadequate. Currently, 

Hancock County has only one intensive out-patient treatment program, no emergency in-patient resources for opiate detoxification, 

and no residential in-patient treatment facility. 

Maine initiated its Adult Drug Treatment Court Program in 

2001 in six jurisdictions, but not in Hancock County. Nevertheless, 

we are hopeful that an Adult Drug Treatment Court will be established here in the near future. 

Finally, although long-term residential therapeutic communities 

similar in scope to the Day Top Program in Rhineback, New York, 

have also proven to be efficacious in the treatment of alcohol and 

opiate addiction, no such program exists in Maine or northern New 

England. It should be noted, however, that the Maine Lighthouse 

Corporation in Bar Harbor is actively seeking to establish such a 

treatment facility. 

Perhaps even more important in the long run will be the development of effective strategies focused on prevention. One such program is The Edge, which is a combined educational and recreational program for children in Washington County during and 

after school hours that is operated by the Maine Sea Coast Mission 

in Bar Harbor. 

Other efforts are being initiated on MDI through a coalition, 

sharing an Office of Substance Abuse Prevention Grant. 

As you know, Maine has experienced a shocking increase in opiate overdose deaths in the last 5 years, and most of these deaths 

were caused by prescription narcotics, especially in combination 

with anti-depressants and alcohol. 

Ten of the 256 overdose deaths occurring in the last 2 years involved residents of Hancock County, and one of the latter lived in 

Southwest Harbor. Tragically, a young Bar Harbor man died of a 

prescription overdose in May, as did a young Bangor man in June 

after being arrested and lapsing into a coma in Ellsworth. 

37

1The prepared statement of Ms. Royal appears in the Appendix on page 77. 

Between July 10 and July 17, five burglaries occurred in Southwest Harbor fitting the picture of drug-related crimes, and a Swans 

Island couple was robbed, bound, and threatened by an individual 

who took $40 and a container of prescription drugs. 

Last, a Southwest Harbor couple was arrested on July 18 for heroin possession. 

Previously it was thought that such problems were encountered 

only in urban areas of the country. Clearly, they have engulfed the 

rural State of Maine as well, including Hancock County and Mount 

Desert Island. 

Accordingly, the following recommendations seem appropriate: 

Federal funding of programs that support education, treatment, 

law enforcement, and prevention efforts to combat alcohol abuse, illicit opiate abuse, and prescription drug abuse must be increased; 

Federal funding should also be provided to support a pilot study 

of Maine’s recently enacted Prescription Drug Monitoring Bill—LD 

945; 

Federal legislation creating a national prescription drug monitoring system should be considered; and 

Similarly, Federal legislation promoting the sharing of an international prescription drug monitoring system between the United 

States and Canada should be considered as well. 

In closing I would like to read a short passage from a letter in 

a local newspaper written by the parents of a young Hancock man 

who died of an overdose in May. 

‘‘We have seen that there are dangers that we as a society are 

ready to protect our children and ourselves against. They include 

inexperienced drivers, impure water and air, and improper electrical wiring to name only a few. 

‘‘We urge you in your capacity as Hancock County commissioners 

to protect our children and the future of Hancock County from the 

pervasive, merciless problem of drug abuse by curtailing the easy 

availability of illicit drugs through increased law enforcement as 

well as greater support for more intensive drug rehabilitation programs.’’

I would like to thank the Kings publicly for giving me permission 

to share their plea with you as well. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Doctor. Ms. Royal. 

TESTIMONY OF BARBARA ROYAL,1 ADMINISTRATIVE 

DIRECTOR, OPEN DOOR RECOVERY CENTER 

Ms. ROYAL. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Senator Sununu, 

for having me here today. 

I come here as a provider. I provide treatment assistance at 

Open Door. 

We, too, like everyone else who has spoken here today, experience the results of what—I really agree 100 percent with Detective 

Riggs from Washington County. 

I see this as a problem that started many years ago and has 

evolved to what we see here today. I do not isolate one drug or one 

substance out as the problem. I see this as an addiction problem. 

38

We have a new tool that we use with adolescents in treatment 

at Open Door and we have a difficult time understanding how dangerous it is to be in the same place as the drug. We put a bag of 

pot in the middle of the room, it cannot hurt you. If it sits in the 

middle of the room, nothing bad is going to happen. The minute 

you pick it up, you are in danger. 

That is what is happening. If we take that analogy and use it 

as a State, we put OxyContin in the middle of the State—or any 

other substance, heroin, pot, alcohol, any other prescription drug—

it is no danger to us if used appropriately, if it is used the way it 

is intended to be used. The minute it is picked up, used and 

abused, sold, it becomes a problem and that is what happens. 

Now we are seeing a situation where we are dealing with a wave 

of addiction—I describe it as a tidal wave—we are all standing on 

the shore. We get hit by a few of the smaller waves, it is still coming, we have not seen full impact. And that is where I stand today. 

I stand there watching this huge thing coming our way. 

Over the past 6 to 8 weeks, just at Open Door alone, we have 

seen about a 50 percent increase in walk-ins in just the past 6 to 

8 weeks. I am talking primarily heroin addicts, but we are also 

looking at poly substance abusers pretty much across the board, all 

substances that can and are abused. 

Most of the time we cannot find places to put them. There is no 

treatment available—when there is treatment available, it is nowhere near enough. So most of the time by the time our day ends 

at Open Door, we have many people who we have not been able 

to help. We have not been able to find places where they truly need 

to be. 

There is a serious problem with the lack of detox. It definitely 

comes back to funding. It also comes back to education for medical 

staff and education for the general public. 

My feeling today, I have this tremendous opportunity to sit here 

in front of you and say to you, one of my primary reasons for sitting in this chair today is because people are suffering unmercifully. Families are suffering. Families are losing their babies. 

Anyone who has lost someone—15, 16, 17, 21, 22—when you lose 

a child, life is never the same. It is happening more and more and 

more and more. 

I have a tremendous passion for the work that I do. My staff has 

a tremendous passion for the work that they do, because on a daily 

basis we work with people who are truly desperate and suffering. 

We need the multi-faceted approach that several people have 

mentioned here today. We need prevention, education, we need 

detox treatment, and we need law enforcement. We need a balanced scale, we need to approach this from all directions equally. 

I refer to that as the three-legged stool. You saw off one leg, the 

stool falls over. If you have three solid legs, that stool will stand 

forever, and that is what we need. 

In Ellsworth alone we have a project that we have been working 

on for several weeks now along with many other areas around 

Portland, Bangor. It is called Ultralight, which is a story of the 

writer’s brother’s own overdose to heroin. 

We are in the process of bringing the play to Ellsworth in September, and the reason I mention that is that what we have 

39

watched over the past few weeks since the general public became 

aware of the project, we have had every walk of life offer to help. 

They say, I will do anything. 

Everyone from our local sheriff to our president of the bank, to 

people who run our local organizations and businesses have 

stepped forward and said we want to come together as a community. That is just one example. 

There is a lot of work to be done. I appreciate your willingness 

to be here to today. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. I want to thank both of you for your eloquent 

testimony. 

Ms. Royal, are you seeing a trend towards younger people coming 

to your clinic? 

Ms. ROYAL. We definitely are. Open Door has an age-range outpatient program for adolescents. Up until a year ago, age 14 to 18. 

We had to lower that age to 13 this past year. 

We have referrals for 12-year-olds that we will not treat, and we 

refer them to other independent providers. We are just not 

equipped to deal with that young age group at this time, but definitely younger and younger. 

The other problem that we have seen along with that is that 

these young people range from approximately, well, 15 all the way 

up to 25. 

They are kind of skipping over prescription drugs and heading 

right into the heroin use because it is easier access and cheaper to 

buy. 

Chairman COLLINS. It is so troubling to think of some 13- and 

14-year-olds already in trouble with drug abuse. 

Are you also seeing an increasing number of clients who are 

abusing legal drugs, prescription drugs, as opposed to heroin and 

other illegal drugs? 

Ms. ROYAL. We are. The population that we find are most affected at this point by legal drugs, prescription drugs, and are between the ages of 18 and 25. We do all of the drug testing for the 

Department of Human Services in our area. So very often on a 

daily basis we have young people walking in who have just had 

their children taken away from them. We do the drug testing. We 

try to get them prepared for treatment. 

That age group, that age range, tends to be the hardest hit for 

the prescription drug abuse. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Dimond, I want to congratulate you for 

your leadership in organizing and spearheading the partnership 

that is leading to increased emphasis on law enforcement assets to 

deal with this problem. 

As a physician, do you also find that there has been a severe 

shortage of treatment options in Hancock County? I think Ms. 

Royal’s facility is the only facility in Hancock County. 

Is that part of the problem as well? 

Dr. DIMOND. Sure. In fact, Open Door is the only intensive outpatient program in Hancock County. There are no acute detoxification resources on an in-patient basis anywhere in the area, and 

there is no residential treatment facility in Hancock County. 

But beyond that, as you know and Senator Sununu from New 

Hampshire, in rural States, the number of professionals in the area 

40

of mental health and addiction is preciously few so that people 

have little to no real access to care. It is a different dimension of 

the problem, forgetting whether or not they have the training to 

help people. 

Chairman COLLINS. That was going to be my next question to 

you because I think that not only do we lack the facilities, but we 

lack the health care providers who have expertise in treating addiction; and I have also seen that in the work that I am doing on the 

problem of mentally ill children not getting the treatment that they 

need. Senator Sununu. 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Dimond, you talked about the need for additional funding or 

additional resources, and your effort has obviously been very successful. 

Did you run into any resistance at the local level? Any resistance 

to the efforts or to the concerns that you were raising? 

Dr. DIMOND. Surely. As you well know, that involves taxes and 

there was a proposal on the table that called for an increase in 

county taxes, and understandably people are very concerned about 

that. That is not a popular thing in the face of a country that has 

decreasing Federal funding to a State that has decreased funding. 

MDEA has been flat funded in the State of Maine for years and 

now we have statistics, at least, of what is going on. 

So as the need goes up, if you are lucky the funding stays the 

same. I do not think so. 

So the solution is coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets and is 

hard to accomplish; but I have to say in all honesty to think that 

I am sitting here in front of you and asking you for Federal dollars 

that are not going to come out of the taxpayers’ pockets would be 

a dream world. But it is a world that needs to happen as a priority 

one way or the other. 

Senator SUNUNU. Ms. Royal, of the heroin addicts that you treat 

at your center in Ellsworth, how many of them, what portion of 

them, began by using prescription drugs? 

Ms. ROYAL. Several. Many—and some of them as mentioned 

today start out as patients who have been in a car accident or some 

kind of injury and started out getting a legitimate prescription that 

they truly needed for pain management and, unfortunately, oftentimes their dependence has often led to addiction and other serious 

problems. 

Percentage-wise, I would say that—I am certainly not going to 

say 100 percent, but I am going to say somewhere between 75 and 

80 percent. 

Senator SUNUNU. Your center is a for-profit center or not-forprofit? 

Ms. ROYAL. Nonprofit. 

Senator SUNUNU. With regard to the for-profit treatment facilities that Chief Chitwood spoke about, what is their revenue model? 

What source do they derive their revenues, and do you have any 

strong feelings about the approach to revenues or the approach between profit and nonprofit centers? 

Ms. ROYAL. I am sorry, I am really not sure. I would make a 

guess and I would say that for some that may be insurance, Medicaid, but I am not sure. Being nonprofit, we do get some State 

41

funding through the Office of Substance Abuse and Medicaid, and 

the rest of that is through private donations and grant writing. 

Senator SUNUNU. And has the State or any of the providers 

tracked different levels of performance between facilities? 

Ms. ROYAL. Our facility is not a medical facility. We do not prescribe any medications. We are purely substance abuse treatment, 

so in that sense they differ. 

Senator SUNUNU. I see. 

Ms. ROYAL. I do not know enough about the for-profits to know 

exactly how the funding is obtained. 

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you very much. Thank you again to 

both of you. 

Chairman COLLINS. I want to thank you very much for being 

with us today and for your comprehensive testimony. It is extremely helpful to us as we seek to address this critical problem. 

We have been able to hear today from a variety of perspectives 

and experts across the board in many fields. That will help us as 

we return to Washington to craft measures to address this burgeoning problem. 

I want to thank everyone for their time and their commitment. 

I also want to thank my staff which has worked very hard to put 

together this hearing. 

And I particularly want to thank Senator Sununu from New 

Hampshire for being here today. I very much appreciate it, particularly since I promised him a lobster lunch but he has to run and 

get his plane so I am not going to be able to keep that commitment. 

Senator SUNUNU. I am sure you will make good on it. 

Chairman COLLINS. We will do our best. I know Senator 

Sununu’s commitment to this issue prompted his participation 

today, and I am very grateful for his being here. 

The hearing record will remain open for 15 days. 

I know that some families who have experienced the horrible 

tragedy of losing a loved one to a drug overdose wish to submit testimony or a letter for the record. We very much welcome that, and 

our staff will work with you. 

I just want to thank a lot of the family members who have taken 

the time to be here today. You are the reason that we are pursuing 

this issue, and I want to thank you very much for your participation as well. 

This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(43)

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