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SHOWING FEBRUARY 3RD - FEBRUARY 9TH
WOMAN IN BLACK (PG-13) 106 min.(Starts Fri. Feb. 3rd) 1:35, 4:30, 7:15, 9:45
RED TAILS (PG-13) 135 min.Open Caption February 7th @ 4:10 show4:10
BIG MIRACLE(PG) 117 min. Starts Fri. Feb. 3rd1:00, 4:00, 7:05, 9:35
CHRONICLE(PG-13) 94 min.(Starts Fri. Feb. 3rd) 1:10, 4:15, 7:35, 9:55
UNDERWORLD AWAKENING (2D)(R) 99 min.9:55
ONE FOR THE MONEY(PG-13) 101 min.1:40, 4:35, 7:40, 10:00
THE DESCENDANTS(R) 125 min.Open Caption Feb. 7th@ 4:05 & 7:05 shows1:05, 4:05, 7:05, 9:50
MAN ON A LEDGE(PG-13) 113 min.1:30, 4:25, 7:30, 10:05
JOYFUL NOISE(PG-13) 128 min.Open Caption Feb. 7th @ 1:25 & 7:00 shows1:25, 7:00
THE GREY(R) 127 min.1:15, 4:20, 7:20, 10:00
By ROGER ALFORD
Associated Press
FRANKFORT — Oxy-contin and other powerfulpainkillers would be lim-ited to 30-day allotmentsunder a Kentucky proposalaimed at cracking down onprescription drug abuse inKentucky where more peo-ple are dying from over-doses than car crashes.
House Speaker GregStumbo filed a bill Thurs-day that would initiate a se-ries of changes, includingstepped-up monitoring ofthe prescription practicesof Kentucky doctors.
“This epidemic trulyknows no bounds, and it’spoised to get much worseif we do nothing,” Stumbosaid. “My approach willhelp us end the deadlyflow of these drugs bothnow and however the bat-tlefield may change in thefuture.”
Stumbo’s proposal alsocalls for the state’s pre-scription monitoring pro-gram, known as KASPER,
to be placed under the ju-risdiction of the attorneygeneral, the state’s top lawenforcement officer. Themonitoring program iscurrently administered bythe Kentucky Cabinet forHealth and Family Serv-ices, a social servicesagency. The change wouldgive law enforcement andprosecutors quick accessto key information thatcould identify unscrupu-lous physicians.
Doctors charged withoverprescribing painkillerswould be barred from writ-ing prescription unlessthey’re cleared of wrong-doing. Physicians foundguilty would immediatelybe stripped of their li-censes.
Not allowing doctors toprovide more than a 30-day supply is intended tolimit the availability of themost widely abusedpainkillers.
Attorney General JackConway, who helped todraft Stumbo’s legislation,has been traveling the
state warning peopleabout the dangers lurkingin their families’ medicinecabinets.
“This is a matter of lifeand death,” Conway toldstudents in Henry andOldham counties onThursday. “I want Ken-tucky kids to know that it isnever OK to take a pill thatis not prescribed to them.These are some of themost dangerous and ad-dictive substances on theplanet. They will take yourappetite, your mind andeventually your life.”
The Office of NationalDrug Control Policy con-siders abuse of prescrip-tion pills the fastestgrowing drug problem inthe United States. By somecounts, prescription drugoverdoses are claiming anaverage of 82 lives amonth.
All of Kentucky’s politi-cal leaders have beenpressing for ways to curbthe state’s prescriptiondrug problem.
White House Drug Czar
Gil Kerlikowske visited thestate last year at the invita-tion of U.S. Sen. Mitch Mc-Connell to see firsthandthe toll prescription drugsis having here. Kerlikowskecalled what he found“heartbreaking.”
Kentucky’s prescriptionpill woes skyrocketed in2000 when addicts discov-ered OxyContin. Policeblamed the drug for hun-dreds of deaths.
Gov. Steve Beshear, aproponent of Stumbo’s billas well as some other pro-posals pending in the statelegislature, said he expectslawmakers to pass somesweeping legislation thisyear to deal with the state’sprescription woes.
“We’ll pull everythingtogether,” Beshear said.“We’ll get the best out ofeverybody’s ideas. I canjust tell you that I am con-fident that we’re going toend up with a very aggres-sive, strong measure thatwill make a dent in pre-scription drug abuse inKentucky.”
mit was sponsored by thetwo U.S. attorneys for Ken-tucky, hosted by the Uni-versity of Kentucky, andbrought together law en-forcement, physicians andthe pharmaceutical com-munity to learn moreabout the problem and co-operate in fighting it.
“We’re galvanizing ourforces, all of our forces, inthis fight,” Gov. SteveBeshear told the packedcrowd. “is is a corrosiveevil, and we have to stop it.”
He noted that drug over-doses kill more Kentuck-ians than traffic accidents,and other speakers said theoverdose numbers areunder-reported.
“I think a lot of our peo-ple have had enough,” saidKerry Harvey, the chieffederal prosecutor for East-ern Kentucky. at’s wherethe problem is worst, butspeakers made clear it isstatewide.
e state has electroni-cally tracked prescriptionssince 2000, but AttorneyGeneral Jack Conway saidonly about 25 percent ofdoctors use the KentuckyAll-Schedule PrescriptionElectronic Reporting sys-tem, and KASPER’s dataare “just sitting there, and
law enforcement are notable to access it” to proac-tively search for peoplegetting an unusual amountof drugs.
Beshear recently ap-pointed a panel of health-care providers to establishguidelines to identify over-prescribers throughKASPER, and his budgetproposal would put moremoney into the system andset up the state’s first sub-stance-abuse treatmentprogram for Medicaid re-cipients.
e day after the sum-mit, House Speaker GregStumbo, D-Prestonsburg,filed a bill to require drugprescribers to use KASPERand require pain clinics tobe owned by doctors,among other things.
While Kentucky hasmany suspicious pain clin-ics, many of the pills havecome from out of state, pri-marily Florida.
Wifredo Ferrer, U.S at-torney for SouthernFlorida, said the state iscracking down on pillmills, in which doctorswere seeing as many as 500patients and making be-tween $2,000 and $6,000 incash each day.
e speeches from offi-cials were leavened withpersonal stories of drug
abuse, death and near-death.
Marine Lance Cpl.Daniel Gross, 26, said hewas 21 when his addictionstarted. He was introducedto pain pills shortly after aroadside bomb explodedbeside his Humvee in Iraqin 2006. With his right footshattered, his other onebroken and his brain in-jured from the blast, hewas prescribed Percocetand oxycodone. With pre-scriptions “overflowing” atCamp Lejeune, N.C., tak-ing pills became common-place.
“If I ran out, I got themfrom someone else,” Grosssaid.
Quickly he became anaddict, a burden he carriedwith him after he was dis-charged two years later. “Ipawned, stole, lied,cheated,” he said. “Nothingelse seemed to matter.”
After two stints in rehab,Gross was able to over-come his addiction. Nowclean for 14 months, hewon a standing ovationfrom the crowd.
Police and local prose-cutors expressed their frus-tration over the problem,with state police Major An-thony Terry likening thesituation to “a dog chasingits tail.”
Floyd County Common-wealth’s Attorney BrentTurner said, “We are nottreading water. ... We aredrowning in a sea of pills,and if something is notdone, the whole region isgoing to be destroyed.”
UK President Eli Capi-louto told the crowd theland-grant universityneeds to be a partner insolving such problems,and the extent of it had be-come clearer to him theday before, when he metwith local extensionagents: “is issue came tothe forefront.”
“is has to be a groupeffort” among public ser-vants and health-careproviders, said Dr. LonHays, chairman of the UKPsychiatry Department.Too often, he said,providers use “the big gun”of a strong painkiller. “Weneed to exhaust othermethods of pain controlbefore we go to thatmethod of pain control.”
Kentucky Health News is aservice of the Institute for RuralJournalism and Community Is-sues, based in the School ofJournalism and Telecommunica-tions at the University of Ken-tucky, with support from theFoundation for a Healthy Ken-tucky.
its $47,500 budget for saltand only $3,764 of its $15,350allocation for overtime.
e milder winter has anadded benefit for workerswho have to clear snowy oricy roads. “It is big formorale purposes,” Morgansaid. “It is hard work and it istough when you are doingyour regular job, then youare getting called out in themiddle of the night underthose conditions severaltimes a week for severalweeks in a row.”
Other area governmentshave a similar sunny outlookon the potential for thou-sands in savings.
Garrard County DeputyJudge-Executive JamesBushnell said the countyhasn’t dipped into its roadsalt budget at all after spend-ing about $34,000 on theproduct last year in the first
quarter alone.“It’s an unexpected plus
for the budget and makes atremendous difference,”Bushnell said. “It’s one ofthose things in the budget,kind of like the jail budget,where it is very difficult topredict. It’s kind of its ownbeast.”
Lincoln County TreasurerTeresa Padgett said thecounty has spent about$4,000 of its $25,000 budgetfor salt so far and only a fewhundred dollars on overtime.
Mercer County TreasurerGayle Horn said she hasmade a salt order once thisfiscal year, and at the currentrate, the county will be ableto stockpile its supply fornext winter.
“We are fortunate that wehave a place we can keep allof our salt, and some placesdon’t have that,” Horn said.“If this continues, it will begreat for us.”
nity members, Beckernoted. No audition is re-quired. e group meetsweekly during the summerand ends the summer sea-son with a public concert.
e Danville Children’sChoir was a long-standingtradition in Danville. “echoir disbanded severalyears ago. Barbara was de-termined to resurrect thechoir and devoted countlesshours to re-establishing theprogram and making sure itis on a sound footing foryears to come,” Becker said.“e choir has been invitedto participate in an Interna-tional Festival in Cincinnatinext year. Only two Ken-tucky choirs were so hon-ored.”
Hall also served as presi-dent of the Arts Commis-sion. “Her work on theboard contributed greatly toits development of a strongscholarship program and itsongoing support of art andartists in the Danville com-munity,” Becker said.
Clay Jackson/[email protected]
Danville Public Works hasn’t had to use much of its salt stockpile thiswinter.
WINTER, from A1
HALL, from A1
PILLS, from A1
Legislation filed to crack down on pill mills
mayor’s person, Gipsoncalled Boyle County dispatchto request assistance from thesheriff’s office to avoid a po-tential conflict of interest.
Deputies Derek Robbinsand Chris Stratton respondedbut passed on investigatingthe matter, instead callingKentucky State Police.Trooper Michael Keeton ar-rived and administered aBreathalyzer test to Douglas,which revealed the mayorhad a blood-alcohol contentof .04 percent, court recordsshow. Under Kentucky law, aperson is considered drunk iftheir blood-alcohol rate is .08percent or greater, so Douglaswas not cited. After the otherofficers left, Douglas firedGipson on the spot.
Court records show Dou-glas initially told Gipson hewas being fired because themayor did not like him. eofficial termination letterstated Gipson, who alsoserved as fire chief, was dis-missed for insubordinationfor failing to address themayor’s concerns about leav-ing the doors to the fire sta-tion open, allowingunauthorized personnel toride in city police cars and ex-cessive fuel use by the policedepartment.
Filings in the case show themayor also offered anotherreason for Gipson’s dismissal.Douglas said that Gipson toldhim in October 2010 that hewas retiring at the end of year.Gipson was running for BoyleCounty sheriff at the time andhad heard that Douglasplanned to replace him withMerl Baldwin, a formerdeputy who is now JunctionCity’s police chief.
When Gipson told themayor in November that heneeded to work through Sep-tember 2011 to collect his fullretirement benefits, Douglasbalked. “What are we goingto do. We’ve already madeother plans,” Douglas toldGipson, according to courtrecords.
In the lawsuit, Gipsonclaimed his firing violated thestate’s Whistleblower’s Actand Policeman’s Bill ofRights, but Boyle CircuitJudge Darren Peckler dis-missed those counts, sayingthose statutes didn’t apply toGipson’s termination. Peck-ler, however, allowed Gipsonto proceed on his wrongfultermination claim, statingthat Gipson was “performingacts pursuant to Kentuckystatutes” when he called inother officers to investigatehis suspicions that the mayorwas drunk.
In the lawsuit, Gipsonasked for reinstatement to hisjob, back pay and punitivedamages for sullying his rep-utation. None of those mat-ters will be addressed duringmediation, however; Irwinsaid the settlement talks willcenter on Gipson receivingpayment for the money fromhis retirement fund that hehas had to spend since his fir-ing.
“He’s been out of workever since,” Erwin said. “He’shad to cash in his retirementto pay his bills.”
Court records show Gip-son, who worked for JunctionCity for 10 years, has with-drawn all $20,248 available inhis retirement account. Hadhe continued in his jobthrough September 2011, hewould have been eligible for$22,083, records show.
DISPUTE, from A1
HOLLIS, Maine (AP) — A9-year-old Maine girl is homefrom a Boston hospitalhealthy, active and with highhopes — and a new stomach,liver, spleen, small intestine,pancreas, and part of anesophagus to replace theones that were being chokedby a huge tumor.
It’s believed to be the first-ever transplant of an esopha-gus and the largest number oforgans transplanted at onetime in New England.
Spunky and bright-eyed asshe scampered around herfamily’s farmhouse outsidePortland, Alannah Shevenellsaid Thursday that she’s gladto be feeling well again andable to go sledding, make asnowman, work on herscrapbooks and give hergrandmother a little good-humored sass.
The best part, though?“Being home,” she said. “Justbeing home.”
It was 2008 when Alannah,then 5, began running a feverand losing weight while herbelly swelled. Doctors dis-covered the tumor that yearand twice attempted to re-
move it, as it made its way likeoctopus legs from organ toorgan.
But it was difficult to accesswhat turned out to be a rareform of sarcoma, said DebiSkolas, Alannah’s grand-mother, and chemotherapydidn’t do the trick, either.
All the time, the growth —known as an inflammatorymyofibroblastic tumor —continued to grow in her ab-domen, causing pain, mak-ing it hard to eat and swellingher up with fluid. Surgery wasthe last resort to save her life,and Alannah spent morethan a year on a waiting listfor the organs, said Dr. HeungBae Kim, the lead surgeon onthe procedure at Children’sHospital Boston.
The family was told therewas a 50 percent chanceAlannah wouldn’t survive theprocedure. But without it, shehad no chance whatsoever.
Things were more tensethan celebratory in Octoberwhen doctors prepared to re-move the growth and the or-gans in one fell swoop andreplace them with organstransplanted in one tangled
piece from another child ofsimilar size.
The hardest part was tak-ing out her organs and thetumor, Kim said, calling it adifficult operation with lots ofblood loss.
“It’s probably one of themost extensive tumor re-movals ever done,” the sur-geon said.
Dr. Allan Kirk, professor ofsurgery at Emory Universityin Atlanta and the editor-in-chief of The American Jour-nal of Transplantation, saidno other esophageal trans-plant has been reported inmedical literature.
After the surgery, Alannahspent three more months atthe hospital, with her grand-mother sleeping every nightin a lounge chair by her bed.She battled infections andcomplications from the sur-gery before finally beinggiven the OK to leave.
She arrived back homeWednesday in the 192-year-old house on a country roadwhere she lives with hergrandmother and grandfa-ther, Jamie Skolas, in Hollis,a town of 4,500 residents. s
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Maine girl bouncing backafter 6-organ transplant
