Seniors reselling their drugs to addicts

Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 12, 2005

PRESTONSBURG, Ky. – Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel around her.

The woman, who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December, is among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling their painkillers and other medications to addicts.

“When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they’ll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries,” Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.

Since April 2004, Operation UNITE, a Kentucky anti-drug task force created largely in response to rampant abuse of the powerful and sometimes lethal painkiller OxyContin, has charged more than 40 people age 60 or older with selling drugs, primarily prescription medications, in the mountains.

“It used to be a rare occasion to have an elderly inmate,” Webb said. “Five years ago it was a rarity.”

Local jails are forced to bear the increased cost of caring for old and often sickly inmates.

Researchers suspect the problem is not limited to Appalachia.

Elderly people “may be looking for a way to bring in a little extra money,” said Erin Artigiani, deputy director of the University of Maryland Center for Substance Abuse Research. “We haven’t heard a lot about senior citizens being a source of those drugs. We know college students do this. It’s not much a stretch to think that seniors could do it, too.”

Dr. Anita Cornett, a physician in Hyden, said one of her patients, a reformed drug addict, told her he bought all his drugs not from a known dealer, but from elderly people.

Cornett said she does random drug screenings to make sure her patients are taking their prescription drugs instead of selling them. In addition, staffers routinely call patients and ask them to bring their prescription bottles in so the pills can be counted.

Neeley, the woman who was arrested along with her son and his girlfriend, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of trafficking prescription drugs as well as marijuana.

However, a prosecutor has agreed not to oppose “shock probation” if Neeley enters a guilty plea at her next court appearance, Dec. 29. Under shock probation, a defendant who is unlikely to repeat the crime is released after getting a brief taste of life behind bars.

Neeley’s attorney, Terry Jacobs, said the plea bargain would be a gamble because the judge could decide not to grant her shock probation, and “six months is a death sentence for her.”

Neeley denied selling drugs. She said she suffers from emphysema and asthma and sometimes uses a wheelchair. She said she was shocked when police arrived to arrest her. They made the 4-foot 8-inch, 120-pound woman walk from her house to a cruiser, she said.