POWELL - It's been said that the solution often creates a new problem.

That apparently could be the case in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin.

Some area law enforcement officers are saying that after years of struggle, they've got the methamphetamine problem more or less in full retreat. But unfulfilled addiction can be a vacuum of human nature. And nature abhors a vacuum.

Enter the new problem: the illicit sale and use of prescription drugs.

In short, the cops were so effective at shutting meth down, something had to take its place, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Steve Herrmann said.

"They (drug arrest suspects and informants) are telling us there's no meth. You can buy all the pills you want, but there's no meth around," said Herrmann, who heads up DCI's Powell-based Northwest Enforcement Team. "We think it's primarily a case of our meth offenders switching appetites."

Abuse of prescription drugs is nothing new, Herrmann said.

But in the last year or so, the black market for and abuse of prescription drugs seems to have boomed - to the point that it has started to replace meth as DCI's No. 1 target in the area, he said.

The most commonly abused seem to be painkillers, such as OxyContin, he said.

Herrmann and Sgt. Roy Eckerdt of the Powell Police Department said children's medications for attention deficit disorder - such as Ritalin - are also popular.

"For somebody who doesn't have ADHD, Ritalin can have the opposite of the intended calming effect," he said. "For them, it can actually produce a meth-like high."

As near as agents can tell, prescription drugs on the streets aren't going by street names, he said.

"They are calling them what they are," Herrmann said. "If they are trying to sell Vicodin, for example, that's what they'll call it. These dealers and users are not uneducated about what these pills are and what they do."

Meth crackdown

How did the prescription drug problem emerge?

About 10 years ago, this corner of Wyoming - which boasts communities ranging from tiny farm towns to the busy tourist bustle of Cody - had the same problem facing much of the rural West. Unlike traditionally "urban" drugs such as heroin or crack, meth could be made relatively easily. With some basic knowledge of clandestine chemistry, a little room and enough paraphernalia, just about anybody driven, or foolhardy, enough to try "cooking" meth could.

But then a couple of things happened.

First, the DCI and sister agencies in other states - along with various local law enforcement departments - started targeting meth labs.

On the other end of the spectrum, organized crime saw a great profit opportunity in meth. "Super labs" in California, Mexico and elsewhere began churning it out in quantities and of a quality that the "mom and pop" meth labs could never hope to match.

"Nobody around here that we were aware of ever operated a lab that was able to produce a pound of meth at a time," Herrmann said. "If they come out of a cook with a couple of grams, they were doing well."

Herrmann and Eckerdt - along with Cody Police Chief Perry Rockvam - said that for a while now, nearly all the meth being used here came from somewhere else.

With the local labs either shut down by cops or shut out by black market economics, it became a matter of going after local meth distributors and dealers. A widespread campaign against meth all over the West seemed to be effective, Herrmann said.

Rockvam and the others cautioned that while meth certainly has been knocked back, it's hardly knocked out.

"Cooking in home labs still happens, but we just don't see as much of it as we used to," Rockvam said.

Getting pills

Prescription drugs present their own set of challenges, Herrmann said.

"With meth, we just had to push it back to the border," he said. "With this prescription drug problem, the source is often as close as the nearest pharmacy."

Herrmann and others said they don't see the medical community as part of the problem.

"We've heard genuine concern and gotten nothing but cooperation from the local medical community on this," Herrmann said.

Doctors and pharmacists are a big part of an ad-hoc focus group that recently formed in Cody to discuss the prescription drug problem and brainstorm for solutions. Approaches include public education, along with aggressive enforcement on one end and addiction treatment on the other, he said.

How are the drugs making it from medicine cabinets and onto the streets?

So far, addicts and dealers seem to be relying on old-school dirty tricks, such as "doc shopping," to pull prescription pills out of the legitimate mainstream and into the street, Herrmann said. There's no evidence yet of any large-scale importing of the drugs by the sorts of organizations that were for a time flooding the area with meth.

"We're not seeing duffel bags full of pills," he said. "Everybody we've busted has had fairly small amounts."

The drugs are also commonly stolen from legitimate patients, Eckerdt said.

"Often, it will be from a family member who has a prescription," he said. "We haven't any real cases of burglary - where somebody goes in and ransacks a stranger's house looking for these medications."

Still, he urged anybody taking the drugs for legitimate reasons to keep a close eye on them.

"Even here in Powell, you just can't leave them sitting in your purse in the front seat of your car," he said.

The popular image of a meth addict was, and still is, a low-class loser. Meth had a reputation as a "redneck" or "hillbilly" drug.

That wasn't the case, the officers said, and neither is it with the prescription drugs.

"We're seeing the same thing we saw with meth," Eckerdt said. "It crosses all demographic boundaries."

Another popular image - of the flashy dealer making wads of cash - isn't holding up to reality either, Herrmann said.

Most dealers, it seems, have habits of their own. So while they might see significant amounts of cash, they're not good at holding onto it.

He and Rockvam added that the potential for fatal overdoses seems worse with abused prescription drugs.

"In 10 years of dealing with meth, I saw only a handful of meth-related deaths," he said. "But this stuff is killing people."

Mark Heinz lives in Powell and can be reached at 307-899-0414.

As of last month, the street price for the illicit sale of some commonly abused prescription medications included:

* OxyContin: $25

* Hydrocortisone: $10

* Morphine: $20

* Ritalin: $10

* Percocet: $10

* Vicodin: $10

Source: Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation]]>