Prescription Drug Abuse Growing in Northeast Ohio

Posted on: 9:15 pm, May 27, 2012, by Bill Sheil, updated on: 11:07pm, May 27, 2012

CLEVELAND It is the new way to become a drug addict: follow doctors orders.

Experts say Ohio is in the middle of a prescription pill epidemic. In fact, the number of people dying from overdoses now exceeds those of heroin and cocaine combined.

Raise your hand if your dependency started for treatment of a medical condition, asks Judge David Matia at the start of Cuyahoga Countys weekly drug court.

Ten hands go up, including the hand of Crystal Manlet.

Manlet, a nurse, was in a horrible car accident that crushed part of her spine. She was in incredible pain, and the doctors were trying to ease that pain.

They prescribed percocets, then they put me an oxycontin, and I slowly progressed to getting caught on opiates by them prescribing me oxycontin, she tells Judge Matia in open court.

Crystal, a registered nurse, says she felt trapped by the pain.

I didnt want to use the drugs, she says, but I couldnt manage without them.

Doctors are now prescribing almost 10 times more opiates, opium-based pain killers such as Oxycontin, then they did just 15 years ago, according to state pharmacy records.

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Prescription Drug Abuse Growing in Northeast Ohio