# 'These drugs are everywhere'; Prescription overdose deaths claim more local victims



## DeputyFife (Jun 28, 2005)

Published: 10/22/2007
'These drugs are everywhere'; Prescription overdose deaths claim more local victims








An undated family photo of Chris L'Esperance, son of Salisbury police Chief David L'Esperance. He died of a drug overdose in May. Handout/Courtesy Photo 
*By Angeljean Chiaramida*
*Staff writer*

_Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on the alarming increase in youth deaths due to prescription drug overdoses._ 
NEWBURYPORT - When the strains of "Amazing Grace" rang out from Immaculate Conception Church the morning of May 31, the words were sung by stunned, saddened mourners gathered for the funeral Mass of 20-year old Christopher L'Esperance.
The son of Salisbury Police Chief David L'Esperance, a Seabrook resident, Chris died at his Groveland apartment over Memorial Day weekend, another local casualty of increasing recreational use of prescription drugs. He overdosed on a powerful - and too-often lethal - methadone wafer.

Devastated by their loss, Chris' mother, Linda, and sister, Corinne, rose after Mass to tell of the wonderful son and brother they had just lost. Often choked with grief, tears streaming down their faces at times, they related their treasured memories of him. Their words brought comfort and occasional smiles from those who knew him. 
Chris was a great big brother who looked out for his sister, Corrine said, and a young uncle who adored playing with his new baby niece. 
He was a boy who loved to ride in the cruiser with his dad, Linda said, adding Chris loved just being with his dad. 
He'd hoped to be a police officer someday like his father, Linda said. Chris wanted to follow his father's exact path, becoming part of the Essex County Drug Task Force. Chris thought "his own experience" would give him an understanding of the drug problem far beyond that of the usual drug task force member, she said. 
Throughout the eulogy, David L'Esperance, in a dark suit of mourning, stood guard in the center aisle of the church beside Chris' casket. Never flinching, head high, back straight, like a sentinel he stood with his hand resting gently, proudly, on the coffin holding the body of his only and beloved son. When at last the Mass concluded, Linda, Corinne and David L'Esperance walked behind the casket as it left the church on Chris' final journey, the women crying. Jaw clinched tight, L'Esperance's face grew red from the effort it took to hold in his grief. 
Those in attendance watched in silent understanding. If L'Esperance gave voice to his agony, its sound would have rocked the rafters.
A growing problem
When 20-year old Chris L'Esperance died on Saturday, May 26, he was the fifth young man with Seabrook ties since March 2005 to die from an overdose of prescription drugs.

There could be more, officials say, but these are prescription-drug-related deaths they're certain of and have toxicology reports to prove. As state and even national statistics illustrate, the death toll from methadone and other prescription drugs is overtaking heroin. 
In 2005 and 2006 there were at least 291 drug-related deaths in New Hampshire, according to statistics provided by the medical examiner's office. Of those, 87 could be traced to abuse of the prescription drug methadone, 40 to the prescription drug oxycodone and 17 to the prescription drug fentanyl. 
If that many deaths were linked to a bacteria strain instead of the abuse of prescription drugs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have termed it an epidemic.
When contacted immediately after his son died, Chief L'Esperance put into words the feelings of law enforcement officials everywhere.
"Drugs are a scourge; no one is immune," L'Esperance said. "Not the Kennedys, not anybody."
Not even a police chief's son who wanted to be a police officer himself. 
Spreading a warning
Approached to speak out about losing his son to drug abuse, L'Esperance was wary at first.
"I'm not a martyr. I'm mourning for my son in my own way. Privately. I don't want this to be about me," he said. "But ... if my speaking gets the message out, if it up keeps another kid from dying and prevents another family from going through what we are, I'll talk about it."
L'Esperance's son was not one of the typical drug users depicted in television dramas. He was an athlete and remained close to his family. Chris didn't have track marks on his arms. He didn't mess with illegal drugs. Prescription drugs were his downfall and his killer. 
L'Esperance can imagine what took place in his son's apartment the night he died. There was no indication Chris intended to kill himself, L'Esperance said, his apartment was clean; he had a full tank of gas in his car. But he probably took all or a portion of a methadone wafer - a pill about the size of a quarter - "laid down on the couch to watch a little TV and just drifted away," L'Esperance said. 
Methadone, like morphine, heroin and other pain relievers, deadens pain and depresses the respiratory system, he said. Since Chris probably had methadone in his system from prior use, the new dose sent him off to sleep initially, then stopped his breathing entirely.

The lure
After speaking with the medical examiner, L'Esperance better understands the lure of medications like fentanyl, oxycodone and methadone. All are powerful analgesics meant to relieve the most severe pain. Though methadone is most widely known as a substitute for heroin in the treatment of addiction, it's so powerful that it's also used in the management of chronic pain.
When a patient in excruciating pain takes a methadone wafer - basically synthetic morphine - the medication blocks the portion of the nervous system that feels pain, L'Esperance said. But, when methadone is taken by someone who isn't in pain, its effect on the nervous system makes its users feel "incredibly good," he said. That great feeling becomes the basis for a psychological addiction, he said. The physical addiction comes later. 
Even though he was devastated by the methadone overdose death of his best friend Lloyd Chapin Jr. of Seabrook, Chris couldn't shake his enchantment with methadone and similar drugs. L'Esperance thinks Chris - like many young, healthy men - think they're immortal and too smart to overdose on drugs they consider fairly safe.
"On television there are ads for every kind of pill," L'Esperance said. "You have a pill to go to sleep, a pill to wake up, a pill to feel good, a pill to enhance your you-know-what. It certainly gives the impression prescription drugs are safer."
Trying to help
L'Esperance knew of his son's drug problem. Noticing changes in Chris' demeanor a few years ago - "his eyes were glassy; his temperament changed" - L'Esperance came right out and asked Chris if he was using drugs. When the answer was "yes," L'Esperance didn't start yelling. He and Chris' mother did everything they could think of get their son help.
"We tried everything," L'Esperance said. "We went to counselling. We did rehab, emergency rooms when we needed to and doctors."
In an effort to put distance between Chris' drug suppliers and friends in Seabrook who also use drugs, L'Esperance even helped Chris set up an apartment in Groveland. But Chris' addiction overcame geography.
"I refuse to attribute his behavior to any locality," L'Esperance said. "It's not Seabrook's fault; I want that understood. This happens everywhere. These drugs areeverywhere. What makes it hard to stop in Seabrook is the old subculture of silence that's always been there."

The Seabrook code of silence is something local and state police investigators run up against often, they said when interviewed.
The L'Esperance family worked to get Chris drug-free, and it would work for a time. The physical addiction Chris could shake, but the psychological need for the wonderful high he got from methadone kept pulling him back.
"We talked about it," L'Esperance said. "He said methadone gave him an incredible high. He didn't drink much; he didn't like marijuana. But this stuff. ... He could kick it for a time. He did earlier and even went back to college and was doing well,... but he went back to methadone."
And it killed him. 
Now L'Esperance has only memories of Chris to sustain him. No longer will he feel the "hello" and "goodbye" hugs he always got from Chris no matter how old his son grew. And L'Esperance will sell the boat he and Chris used together on the fishing expeditions they'd shared since he was a boy. 
"That boat is the only thing I can't face without him."

Deaths due to prescription drugs
* *Christopher L'Esperance,* 20, formerly of Seabrook, died in his Groveland apartment May 26, 2007, from an overdose of the prescription drug methadone. 
* *Lloyd T. Chapin Jr.*, 17, of Seabrook, died on Feb. 3, 2006, at Exeter Hospital, after lying in a coma for 10 days due to an overdose of methadone. His parents, Miliki and Lloyd Chapin, Jr., were at his bedside holding his hand.
* *Kevin Cassidy Jr.*, 21, of Amesbury died in Seabrook on Sept. 18, 2005, from the lethal mixture of alcohol and oxycodone, a prescription drug known also by the brand names OxyContin, Percocet or Percodan.
* *Jimmy Manazir*, 29, of Haverhill died in Seabrook on March 22, 2005, after consuming a fatal combination of alcohol and Valium.
* *Ryan Bickford*, 18, of Hampton died in Seabrook on March 10, 2005, from a deadly cocktail of beer and the prescription drug fentanyl.


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## DeputyFife (Jun 28, 2005)

Published: 10/24/2007
'These are good kids making a bad choice'; Prescription drug deaths zero in on athletes, one-time users
*By Angeljean Chiaramida*
*Staff writer*

_Editor's note: This is the second part in a series on prescription drug abuse in the greater Newburyport area._ 
Police engrossed in the drug war admit the battle to stop recreational use of potentially deadly prescription drugs is different from the traditional campaign to stop the use of illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine and marijuana. 
Police and legal officials in New Hampshire and Massachusetts agree the recreational use of prescription drugs among teens and young adults is more rampant and complex than most people believe. Seabrook police think prescription drugs are 90 percent of the town's drug problem.

In 2005 and 2006, there were at least 291 drug-related deaths in New Hampshire, according to statistics from the medical examiner's office provided by Assistant Attorney General Ann Rice. Although some deaths involved more than one drug, with alcohol often in the mix, 87 deaths were traced to abuse of the prescription drug methadone, 40 to oxycodone, 31 to diazepam, and 17 to fentanyl. 
In Massachusetts, Steve O'Connell, spokesman for the Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, said that as of this September, 40 confirmed deaths from drug overdoses had been recorded this year in Essex County, and many more suspected drug deaths are awaiting toxicology reports to confirm the cause. Of the 40 known drug deaths, 15 - or almost 38 percent - were confirmed prescription drug overdoses. 
Law enforcement officials agree the escalating pattern of prescription drug abuse is frightening and proving very hard to stop. 
To begin with, they said, those abusing prescription drugs don't fit the usual profile of drug addicts. They aren't primarily kids from poor or dysfunctional homes. They aren't disenfranchised youth living on the streets. They are high school athletes, college students and the kids next door. 
After investigating three deaths involving a mix of prescription drugs and alcohol in one a six-month period in Seabrook in 2005, Det. Sgt. Michael Gallagher alerted The Daily News to the problem. "Historically, when we were called to an overdose scene, we'd arrive to see an underweight, malnourished junkie who'd overdosed on heroin, usually with the needle still sticking into his arm," Gallagher said. "But when a kid is shooting hoops with his pals on the basketball court one day, and dead of an overdose of prescription drugs and alcohol the next, this is truly alarming."

"Big swing" 
Law enforcement officials can only speculate why this problem has surfaced. They believe people are taking prescription drugs to get high because they think they're safer and not as "dirty" as using heroin, crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine or marijuana. The stigma of being a junkie doesn't seem to apply in their minds when it comes to abusing prescription drugs. 
"There's been a big swing over the years away from heroin to prescription drugs," said Capt. Russ Conte of the N.H. State Police. "Maybe it's because kids think if you're going to use a 20 milligram oxycodone, at least you know it's from a pharmacy." 
The change in Seabrook, for example, was relatively quick. In 2003 and 2004, the war in Seabrook was against the use of heroin, which was cheap and abundant. Yet by 2005, Gallagher and others said, the trend began to change to prescription drug abuse. Currently, police believe prescription drugs are 90 percent of the drug problem in Seabrook.
Gallagher said that Lt. Kenneth Gill of the Essex County Drug Task Force and Lt. Terry Kineen, supervisor of New Hampshire State Police drug unit, the prescription drugs abused most often include diazepam (Valium); amphetamine-dextroamphetamine (Adderall prescribed for attention deficient disorder); hydrocodone (Vicodin); oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet, Percodan); clonazepam (Klonopin); propoxyphene (Darvon); hydromorphone (Dilaudid); lorazepam (Ativan); fentanyl transdermal patches (Duragesic); and methadone wafers (synthetic morphine). 
Used correctly, under the supervision of a physician, in the correct dosages and never in combination with alcohol, these drugs serve needed medical purposes. 
Used incorrectly, they kill. 
Dosages are critical because along with reducing pain or anxiety, these drugs depress the central nervous system to block the sense of pain, but as a side effect, they also depress respiration.
"You use too much, you stop breathing," said Salisbury police Chief David L'Esperance, who lost his son to a methadone overdose earlier this year. 
Kineen and Gallagher said kids don't understand the critical importance of dosage when dealing with prescription drugs. Gallagher said kids are known to chew transdermal fentanyl patches, absorbing the dose all at once, but the patches are ment to be absorbed through the skin slowly over a three-day period.

OxyContin tablets are prescribed as time-release tablets that come in a variety of doses from 5 milligrams to 80 milligrams. They're prescribed only for those in severe, chronic pain, such as cancer patients. Yet recreational users and addicts take a shortcut to get the medication into their systems as quickly as possible - often with an alcohol chaser - to get high.
"Kids are crushing these tablets, which bypasses the time-release action of the pill," Kineen said. "Crushing rushes a huge amount of the drug into the bloodstream all at once. The side effect is a severe depression of respiration. Death can occur quietly after a single dose." 
Affluent families
On the street, these drugs command a high price, given what they cost at the pharmacy. Unlike heroin, which can be purchased for $5 to $10 a bag, or a six-pack of beer, oxycodone sells on the street for $1 a milligram, L'Esperance said. Using that formula, the 80 milligram oxycodone pill costs about $80. 
"Kids from affluent families are almost more at risk, more likely to get involved with prescription drug use," Gill said. "They're the kids with the money to pay $80 for oxycodone. They're the ones with the cars and transportation." 
And being good students or athletes doesn't necessarily keep kids away from recreational use of prescription drugs, he said. A football player who downs an oxycodone with a beer at a Friday night party to get a great high and celebrate winning the big game would never even consider buying a bag of heroin, Gill said. That athlete probably looks down on the "druggie" who snorts or shoots heroin. But athletes might take an oxycodone pill or a methadone wafer as an adventure to have a little fun, Gill said. They think: What can it hurt? It's a legal drug, isn't it? 
"These are good kids making a bad choice and ending up with a life decision," Gill said. 
It doesn't take a lot to become addicted physically or psychologically to the euphoria these drugs create. 
Gill gave a real-life example: former Peabody High star pitcher Jeff Allison, who ended up in jail in North Carolina in August instead of playing professional baseball in Florida for the Marlins. Allison is in jail because he couldn't break his overwhelming needed for oxycodone, which he began using in high school, Gill said.

"I think this kid got a $1.8 million bonus to sign with the Marlins," Gill said. "If you had walked up to him when he was in high school and said, 'Here, have some heroin,' I bet he would have told you, 'Stay away from me with that filthy stuff.' But it was OK for him to take oxycodone. This kid could really throw the ball. He was a star. Now he's in some jail."
Allison's story is a tragedy of a talented kid making a bad choice that will haunt him for the rest of his life, Gill said.
Every expert interviewed for this article and series asked that the same message be conveyed: Parents who think they're kids are too smart, too careful, too scared or too well-brought-up to get involved with this drug trend need to think again, and they need to talk to their kids early and often.

Most abused prescription drugs

r diazepam (Valium)r amphetamine-dextroamphetamine (Adderall) 
* hydrocodone (Vicodin) 
r *oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet, Percodan) 
* clonazepam (Klonopin) 
* propoxyphene (Darvon) 
* hydromorphone (Dilaudid) 
* lorazepam (Ativan) 
* fentanyl transdermal patches (Duragesic) 
* methadone wafers (synthetic morphine)

Source: Lt. Kenneth Gill of the Essex County Drug Task Force and Lt. Terry Kineen, supervisor of New Hampshire State Police drug unit

Published: 10/24/2007
'Pill pushers' are harder to catch Seabrook's 'Code of Silence' hurts efforts
By Angeljean Chiaramida
Staff writer

Twenty-year-old Chris L'Esperance never had a prescription for the methadone wafer that killed him in his Groveland apartment on May 26. 
Nor did he have prescriptions for any of the prescription drugs he used to get high over the years while his family tried everything to help him overcome his problem, said his father, Seabrook resident and Salisbury police Chief David L'Esperance.
None of the four other young men with local ties who died from prescription drug overdoses in Seabrook since March of 2005 had prescriptions for the drugs that killed them. Chris and the others got the drugs, his father said, from someone who may have stolen them from someone's bathroom medicine cabinet or from someone in the habit of amassing prescriptions and selling illegally what they don't use themselves.

"The news always gets out to those who want them where these drugs are available," L'Esperance said. 
Unfortunately, such news rarely reaches law enforcement because of the long-engrained small-town code of silence among Seabrook's drug culture. Police have been stonewalled, even in cases where deaths occurred. 
The medical profession and pharmacies have tightened prescription writing and dispensing policies for oxycodone over the years because of abuse of the drug. But clever drug-seekers can get around the restrictions. And there are other prescription drugs that have taken its place. 
Catching people who sell prescription drugs illegally is a whole new ball game for law enforcement, said L'Esperance, a member of the Essex County Drug Task Force before taking over the top job in Salisbury. Oddly, he said, the fact that police aren't dealing with major kingpins trafficking in illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine, crack, crystal meth or marijuana actually makes it harder to stop the flow. 
"These aren't the big bad guys," L'Esperance said. "Let's call these the little bad guys. A lot of them have legal prescriptions from doctors for the drugs they're selling (to others). They doctor shop; they go from doctor to doctor complaining of severe back pain or tooth pain or whatever to get prescriptions. When one doctor stops prescribing, they just go to someone else. "Then they go to different pharmacies to have each prescription filled so the pharmacists don't know they've filled six prescriptions for, say, 20 oxycodone each on the same day."

Seabrook police Sgt. Mark Preston said it's amazing what prescription drug seekers will do to get the drugs they want. A former member of the state Attorney General's Drug Task Force, Preston learned drug seekers will go to dentists for strong pain relievers, claiming excruciating pain.
"When the dentist x-rayed the tooth and found nothing wrong with it, the guy told the doctor to pull the tooth anyway because it was so painful," Preston said. "The thinking was after the tooth extraction, the dentist will write a script to lessen the pain it caused. I know of dentists who are wise enough to tell the person they won't pull the tooth."
When their scam does work, tricks of the trade help keep these "little bad guys" off law-enforcement radar screens. They don't use insurance cards to pay for their prescriptions because their repeated use would be detected and denied by insurance carriers. Even credit cards leave a trail of evidence. Cash is the way they pay for their pills, and as a result, they're hard to notice, L'Esperance said.
After amassing a drug like oxycodone, he said, some might be consumed by the addicts who get the prescriptions, and some might be sold at enormous mark-ups to get the cash to buy more pills, he said.
For example, on the street an oxycodone 80 milligram tablet is worth $80. Selling half of their prescriptions can keep prescription drug dealers well supplied with money and provide enough pills, he said.
*Established pattern*
L'Esperance's description of how prescription drugs are obtained was repeated again and again in interviews with local and state police in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
"Here's a typical example," said retired Seabrook police officer Ed Cody. "I'd answer a call from Wal-Mart on shoplifting. I'd get there and find two girls, usually shoplifting to get money to buy drugs. I'd arrest them, but before I put them in the cruiser, our policy requires I go through their pocketbooks to make sure there are no weapons. What I'd find was three or four prescriptions for the same drug."
At the Seabrook Police Station, calls would be made to alert the doctors whose names were on the prescription, and the doctors were grateful, Cody said.
Another scheme to get prescription drugs is for patients with prescriptions to claim their pills were stolen so they can obtain a second supply, said Seabrook Det. Sgt Michael Gallagher.

"Once or twice a week people come in to say they've had their prescriptions stolen," Gallagher said. "They say, 'I just filled a prescription for OxyContin and it got stolen."
These incidents don't warrant arrests, Gallagher said. Given how sought-after OxyContin is, it is possible someone stole the pills. But even if Gallagher suspects abuse, he needs more to act.
"We need probable cause to get an arrest warrant," Gallagher said. "And we need evidence to show probable cause."
Lt. Kenneth Gill of the Essex County Drug Task Force, and Lt Terry Kineen, supervisor of New Hampshire State Police said getting evidence on suspected prescription drug dealers is no easy feat.
"You pretty much need to catch the person with the prescription in the act of selling his pills," Kineen said.
*'Code of Silence'*
Gallagher gets occasional anonymous tips reporting drug deals, but often can't act on them.
"The usual call is from someone who says 'I don't want to get involved, and I don't want to give you my name, but so-and-so is selling pills from the back door or his house. Why don't you do something about it?" Gallagher said.
Gallagher knows people get angry when arrests don't follow immediately, but reports have to be investigated to ensure they aren't from people just trying to get their enemies in trouble. And if the person involved has a prescription for the drug in possession, no arrest can be made without the kind of evidence Kineen discussed. 
That takes round-the-clock surveillance.
"I don't have the money or the manpower for 24-hour surveillance," Gallagher said. "We need someone known to the seller willing to help. Someone motivated to make a buy for us so we can arrest the person selling the drugs. In Seabrook, there's still this strong subculture of silence that's very hard to crack. Trust me, the Mafia's code of silence has nothing on the one you'll find in Seabrook."
Kineen, Preston, Cody and L'Esperance said that Gallagher isn't making up excuses. In Seabrook it's always been hard to get people to help police.
Gallagher and Det. Scott Mendes use two incidents to show how ingrained the code of silence is among the local drug culture.
When Ryan Bickford died in a Seabrook apartment on March 10, 2005, his friends called for help, but by the time it came, Bickford was dead. Gallagher found an 18-year-old boy dead for no apparent reason in a place where legally prescribed drugs were rumored to be available.

Although Bickford's best friend had been with Bickford before he died, Gallagher got nothing from him, and there was no evidence at the scene. It was 12 weeks before Gallagher got the toxicology report indicating Bickford died from an overdose of fentanyl and alcohol.
"(The boy we questioned) referred to Ryan as his 'blood brother," Gallagher said. "I tried to get him to tell me what happened, what Ryan had taken and why an apparently healthy teenager died while just sleeping on the couch. I told him, 'You're his best friend. Please help us.' ... But he wouldn't tell us anything, and they'd cleaned up the place before we arrived."
In May 2007, when bystanders took Corryn Szczuka's son away from her and called the police because of her intoxicated condition, Mendes arrived at parking lot of O'Brien's Country Store and took the mother and son into custody. At the station, Szczuka passed out so often that Mendes took her to Exeter Hospital, where it took two shots of Narcan to counteract the drugs she'd taken.
Szczuka said she'd taken heroin, the prescription drug Klonopin, smoked marijuana and drank beer, but she wouldn't tell him where she got the drugs.
"She told me, 'I'm not going to tell you where I was. I'm not a rat," Mendes said.
Getting undercover help by "flipping" small time drug users to catch drug dealers is hard, Preston said, especially in Seabrook. But during his two years with the Drug Task Force in the early 1990s he did see the process work well in certain parts of the state.
"There has to be a culture in the Police Department that's willing to give up arresting the little fish and use the little fish to get the big fish," Preston said. "Plus law enforcement can't do this alone. It takes law enforcement, education, treatment centers, even legislation to put together what's needed to stop this."


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