STATE NEWS — It usually happens in bigger cities like Nashville before it trickles down into rural communities. Regardless, southern middle Tennessee safety officials warn that heroin pills produced to look identical to the drug Oxycodone have been seized in Madison — just 95 miles north of Lynchburg. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) along with local and federal officials seized thousands of pills stamped to look identical to the painkiller.

Federal officials state that similar pills have been responsible for overdose deaths across the country and counterfeit pills have been found in 45 states and caused 27 deaths including as many as four in middle Tennessee.

Tennessee is ranked third in the country for prescription drug abuse, and cuts across demographics. Studies show that about 5 percent of Tennesseans have used pain relievers in the past year for non-medical purposes, and more than 70 percent of people who use prescription drugs for non-medical reasons got them from a friend or relative. The abuse of prescriptions drugs is having disastrous consequences in the state, including overdose deaths, increasing hospital costs and emergency room visits, children being put in state custody, and incarceration of drug-related crimes, according to the TBI.

Early this year, at least two dozen reports surfaced in Tennessee that Fentanyl was being sold on the street disguised as less powerful drugs like Oxycodone and Percocet. •

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