More than 86,000 children in Kentucky are being raised by
someone other than a biological parent, and prescription drug abuse is
largely to blame, community leaders say.
CNN
reports that while it is difficult to assess how many children are
orphaned after a parent overdoses from prescription drugs, state data
shows Kentucky is the fourth most medicated state in the country, and
has the sixth highest rate of overdose deaths.
“Someone has to take care of these kids, and we simply do not have
the facilities to do that,” said U.S. Representative Hal Rogers, whose
district in Kentucky is hard hit by prescription drug abuse. “So it’s
neighbors, it’s churches, other civic groups that are trying to be
parents to these kids who are orphaned by drug-abusing parents. That’s a
huge undertaking, because there’s literally tens of thousands of these
young children.”
He started the Operation UNITE drug task force in 2003 to fight the
prescription drug abuse epidemic in Kentucky. The task force has set up
programs at schools across the state to help children who have lost
their parents to these drugs.
The state has taken steps to combat prescription drug abuse. Earlier this year, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear signed into law
a bill requiring that all pain clinics be licensed, specifies
requirements for ownership and employment, and obliges Kentucky’s
licensure board to develop regulations for pain clinics. It gives law
enforcement easier access to the state’s prescription drug monitoring
database. Doctors must examine patients, take full medical histories,
and check electronic prescription records before writing prescriptions
for opioids.
Last month, Dan Smoot, Law Enforcement Director of Operation UNITE,
noted that as Kentucky begins to see results from its crackdown on
prescription drug abuse, officials are reporting a rise in heroin use.
