News Taffy

According to The Sun, a third burglary has occurred at a Jonesboro pharmacy in less than 40 days resulting in at least an additional 24,000 hydrocodone pills hitting the streets of Jonesboro and surrounding communities.

On December 2, 2011, Country Mart, 3106 Southwest Drive, reported that more than 4,000 hydrocodone pills and other medicines had been stolen. Then a few days later, Parker Road Speciality Pharmacy, 1109 West Parker Road, reported that it was hit and, according to our sources, that theft involved at least 15,000 hydrocodone pills. Now it is being reported that on January 9, 2012, Parker Road Speciality Pharmacy was hit again involving an estimated theft of approximately 5,000 hydrocodone pills.

According to our sources, hydrocodone pills had a local “black market” street value of $8 to $10 a pill and with the flood of over 24,000 of these new pills on our streets we are told that they will now be available to your kids and grandchildren for about $5 a piece. At these rates, we are talking about a street profit of $120,000.00 to $240,000.00 from these 3 burglaries alone for people that are causing a lot of destruction to families and businesses in our community.

So how in the world have we gotten to the point where one of the best cities in America to raise a family has such a high street demand for highly addictive narcotics? Well it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out and, although there are several factors involved, we cannot continue to ignore the facts as we know them. It is called supply and demand.

First of all, pain pills have highly addictive properties and if used improperly, and sometimes even when used as prescribed, these pills cause a chronic mental illness that we refer to as “chemical addiction”. PERIOD.

Secondly, when the Out of the Dark started in the fall of 2008, Arkansas led the nation with the highest rates of teens (ages 12-19) abusing highly addictive pain medicine and the rates in Craighead County were above state average. Yes, as shocking as it may be, we were No. 1 in the nation with our 6th graders reporting the use of these narcotics and our 12th graders reporting that 1 out of 4 of them were involved in using these drugs without the supervision of a physician. In fact, all of the national experts had been reporting that Arkansas was one of the top states for teens experimenting with these dangerous narcotics since 2002.

Thirdly, since the first warnings about this trend started in 2002, our community did not respond but rather ignored this growing problem because of our lack of knowledge and the unwarranted stigma and discrimination associated with the myths about addiction. In fact, it took a news report about 5 local young people overdosing on heroin in the summer of 2008 before our community even started really asking questions to try to address this problem. By then, we were already behind the eight ball because a lot of kids had already grown into adulthood with this chronic illness and this problem had already reached epidemic levels.

So is it too late to stop this widespread illness and the collateral damage it causes in our community? We don’t think so but we have only reached the tip of the ice berge.

We have already proved over the past couple of years that the “Local Level Up” community model we have developed will reduce the street demand for prescription pain medicine and other addictive drugs through local public awareness, in-school prevention programs and treatment programs. However, as evidenced by the recent pharmacy burglaries it is clear that we still have a long way to go.

Help us fight this battle to save our community by joining the Craighead Out of the Dark Coalition (CODC) at www.OutoftheDark.org and by sending your private donations to Out of the Dark Inc., 407 Union Avenue, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72403. We are a local 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we are investing your donations back into your community.

The next CODC meeting is scheduled for February 2, 2012.

OUT OF THE DARK INC.
www.OutoftheDark.org

“Fighting chemical addiction one community at a time!”