Prescription for Crime

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State and local officials are building institutions virtually overnight to grapple with pill-related crime. Three regional jails are set to open this spring to ease inmate overcrowding in the state's Appalachian corner, and the Virginia general assembly recently appointed another circuit judge to help Tazewell. Also, the legislature has begun exploring an expansion of southwestern Virginia's prescription-monitoring program statewide, allowing state police and physicians to detect patients who go doctor shopping. In Tazewell, authorities are applying a big-city solution to their rural problem. They recently began a drug court dedicated to drug cases, where young narcotics offenders receive intensely monitored probation. And Lee has been appointed a special U.S. Attorney, giving him the power to prosecute weapons-for-drugs cases in federal court--a statute that doesn't exist on Virginia state books--where convictions carry a minimum penalty of five years in prison. Says Tazewell sheriff's captain Clarence Tatum: "If we could get rid of Oxy and all the related drugs, we'd wipe out 75% of the crime in this county."

In Tazewell, the pill-induced crime wave started insidiously and then changed everything. Jerry Turley, a pharmacist, says it begins with people "sneaking into their grandmother's drawers and stealing stuff." But Connie Dye, whose nephew was convicted of robbing a pharmacy, says the situation has deteriorated to the point where "we've put dead bolts on our door. We even put a lock on our gate." For many Tazewell residents, that is the most tangible evidence that their way of life has quickly been lost. •