Published: May 18, 2009 02:25 pm      

Five more arrested in ‘pill pipeline’

By Sean Bailey / Staff Writer

Williamsburg Police arrested five more people Friday morning believed to be part of the “pill pipeline” between Kentucky and Florida.

Once again, police’s “hands were tied” when it came to charging the individuals with drug trafficking.

Williamsburg Public Affairs Officer Shawn Jackson said he was at the Hometown BP gas station near Interstate 75 exit 11 at around 8 a.m. Friday when he noticed five people “get very nervous and anxious” when they spotted him. Officer Jackson said he followed their vehicle out of the gas station’s parking lot.

“When they pulled out, I pulled out behind them,” Jackson said. “They got extremely nervous and started weaving back and forth on the highway.”

Jackson said he pulled the vehicle over and the driver, Zona Mink of Somerset, said she and her passengers were on the way home from a funeral in Florida.

“I started talking to them one by one, the passengers,” Jackson said. “They also told me they had been to a funeral, however each passenger told me a different town they had been to the funeral in.”

Jackson said Mink failed “several” sobriety tests that he administered, and Jackson charged her with careless driving and driving under the influence.

While interviewing the passengers and searching the vehicle, Jackson said police found several painkiller prescriptions — from oxycodone to diazepam. Jackson said all the passengers had prescriptions for the pills from a pain clinic in Boca Raton, Fla. Jackson said the group also had several unfilled prescriptions from the same pain clinic.

The pills allegedly came from the same pain clinic that gave pills to three people arrested by the Williamsburg Police for public intoxication less than a week ago.

According to Jackson, the pain clinics in Florida give prescriptions to “just about anyone” — often without even performing exams to check the veracity of patients’ complaints. Police believe that in addition to getting pills for recreational use, Kentuckians are going to Florida to buy large amounts to bring back to the Commonwealth and sell on the street.

And that is what’s frustrating for police — as long as the subjects have valid prescriptions, they can’t be arrested for trafficking.

But police say they have reason to believe many of the people traveling the “pill pipeline” are selling the pills once they get back to Kentucky. Jackson said another red flag was raised during Friday’s arrest when police discovered the car Mink was driving was registered to someone in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky.

“Add to that, she had a Jessamine County address on her driver’s license, she told us a Nicholasville address for where she lived, and all the other passengers said she was from Somerset,” Jackson said. “The passengers didn’t even know whose car they were riding in.”

There is work taking place in the Florida legislature to close the “painkiller pipeline” coming out of the sunshine state.

According to an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, legislators in Florida have passed a bill requiring a state-wide drug tracking system. The system would be similar to Kentucky’s KASPER (Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting System) which tracks who prescribes, dispenses and receives the drugs.

The Herald-Leader article reports that Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo sent a letter to Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist offering Kentucky’s help on getting the system up and running.

Jackson hopes something happens soon, because the two groups of arrests in one week demonstrate the severity of the problem.

“You can see how hot the prescription drug pipeline is out of Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale,” Jackson said. “This is just a prime example of how hot it is. Right off the bat when this car pulled out of the gas station, I made the statement that they’ve been to a pain clinic.”

Jackson said one of the passengers arrested Friday eventually admitted that the group had been to a pain clinic, gotten high, and then went to the beach.

“One of the subjects stated to me they went to Florida to the pain clinics, all of them went to the beach, got high, passed out on the beach, and got pretty bad sunburns,” Jackson said. “So I guess you could say it’s kind of a prescription narcotic pain vacation that went bad.”

The four passengers of the vehicle, Tiffany A. Helton, Jeremy Kyle Goodin, Sarah B. Evans and John Gertchen, all ofº Somerset, were charged with public intoxication.

They were taken to the Whitley County Detention Center without incident.