The currency of the United States consists of dollars, quarters, dimes and nickels. Increasingly, the currency of Susquehanna County includes Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet and Norco. Unlike marijuana which can be grown surreptitiously on one’s own property, the aforementioned drugs only come from the physicians who prescribe them and the pharmacies that dispense them. And these drugs – narcotics – can kill when used incorrectly or for recreational purposes. They can be (and are) stolen from your medicine cabinets. They can be (and are) sold to your children. A recent study conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that 62% of teenagers say prescription pain relievers are easy to swipe from their parents' medicine cabinets and 50% say such drugs are effortlessly obtained at the street level.

Narcotic abuse is not only a Susquehanna County problem. In the United States, drug overdose deaths increased for the eleventh consecutive year in 2010, according to an analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The CDC analysis revealed a 200% rise in overdose deaths between the years 1999 and 2010. Overdose deaths involving narcotics, medically known as opioid analgesics, have climbed even higher, rising 400% between the years 1999 and 2010. In 2010, nearly 60% of the drug overdose deaths involved prescription drugs. Opioid analgesics, such as oxycodone (OxyContin), hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco), and methadone, were involved in about 3 of every 4 prescription drug deaths, confirming the predominant role such potent medications play in fatal drug overdoses. The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, a pharmaceutical market intelligence firm, calculated that hydrocodone was the most prescribed medication in the United States – with 131 million prescriptions. Hypothetically, if each prescription was written for 100 tablets, then 13 billion tablets are out there, from sea to shining sea.

A substantial fraction of these pills do float into the hands of people for whom they are not prescribed. “Pharm parties” are becoming ever more prevalent among American adolescents and are common in Susquehanna County. A pharm party is a get-together where teens ingest either purchased or filched prescription drugs, often used in combination with alcohol and marijuana. The outcome of such a bash is like playing Russian roulette. A kid could live. A kid could die.

Narcotics have become a valuable commodity. Many of the people who divert prescription drugs are on Pennsylvania medical assistance. So, for a prescription co-pay of $1.15 for 100 oxycodone tablets, they can make $1,000 by selling them for 10 bucks apiece – an 870% return on their “investment.” I only wish my mutual funds would generate that kind of scratch. Selling prescription drugs paid for by the government is not only a treasure trove for these directionless losers but also a slap in the face both to people who work for a living and also for those who medically require these drugs. (By the way, the Welfare Fraud Tip Line is 1-800-932-0582.)

Does a 20-something adult – typically unemployed and/or on disability – need a powerful narcotic for a nebulous diagnosis like “lower back pain”? Such drugs are legally and rightfully indicated for those with terminal cancer and other severe and chronic pain-related conditions. Is this person selling part or all of his or her prescription? Are these medicines under lock and key away from others who can steal them? Or is she or he passed out on the couch, leaving these potentially deadly drugs out in the open and available to toddlers, pets, and drug pushers?

As curious and fallible human beings, we have to be protected from our natural impulses and faults. These protections are called the law. Susquehanna County District Attorney Jason Legg stated it best in his November 28, 2012 column when he reiterated the legal ramifications of diverting prescription drugs to others: “the unlawful distribution of prescribed controlled substances is considered a very serious offense under the Sentencing Guidelines. For instance, if you gave one of your Percocet pills to a friend, the Sentencing Guidelines place an offense gravity score of 6 – which is two times the offense gravity score for the offense of delivering a small amount of marijuana to another person. If it was your first offense, then the standard range for your sentence would be between 3 to 12 months incarceration for delivering that single pill to your friend. This means that you will be in jail – and you may even go to state prison if the Court sentenced you in the upper range of that offense.”

Perhaps people in the health care field, who should know better, need more education on the pervasive, lethal and criminal problem of prescription drug diversion throughout Susquehanna County.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ron Gasbarro

New Milford, PA

It was the age of rationalism. Reason would triumph over religious superstition. What could not be detected with the five senses was irrational and rejected out-of-hand.  Religion would become refuse. Reason would rule.

The times were ripe for Charles Darwin and his seminal book, On The Origin of Species. Written in 1859, it sent a shock wave through the world of science surpassed only by Newton's monumental, Principia Mathematica.

Darwin's tome became the evolutionists' bible, their holy writ that explained everything.

Here was a rational theory that explained life in all its diversity and complexity. Species developed from the simple to the complex by a series of mutations. Harmful mutations over the course of time would be eliminated while beneficial ones would be passed on. It was the excelsior time. Ever onwards and upwards for the reign of reason and evolution.

But what about the inanimate world, the stars, planets, moons? How could the universe be rationalized? Indeed, it can. All it takes is imagination.

Evolutionists speculate that “in the beginning” everything was created out of nothing. From this contradiction in terms, they further suppose that, according to the Big Bang theory the entirety of the universe came in to being as a speck no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

But there's a problem here that is glossed over.

Everyone who has ever made a snowball knows that to make it really hard it had to be tightly squeezed. But the energy needed to compress all the matter of the universe in to a period-sized dot is greater than that contained in the whole universe. No matter. We proceed.

The Big Bang theory goes on to envision that this speck exploded in to a fine dust. Gravity coalesced the dust into ever larger cosmic dust bunnies that become the trillions of galaxies each of which is composed of hundreds of billions of stars.

Orbiting one of these stars was a special planet, the Goldilocks planet, where conditions for life were just right, not too hot and not too cold. In some murky puddle, a slimy, brown mixture sprang into life: the proto-plant.

Conveniently, this first plant had the ability to both reproduce and manufacture its own food from the energy supplied by light from a nearby star, the Sun. In time, some plants developed into fish and all the other fauna and flora of the deep. Other plants, unlike Kermit's lament, surmised that life would be easier being green.

However, some fish are never satisfied. They peered above the surface of their watery realm to see with longing eyes, land, lush with grasses, bushes, and trees.

These fish, after the duly required epochs of time, satisfied their wanderlust by exchanging fins and gills for legs and lungs. They became terrestrial animals wandering about their earthy home.

Some of these animals became insects, spiders, butterflies; others ventured into the air and became birds, some burrowed into the earth and became worms, still others took to the trees and became monkeys.

But a few were homesick for the sea. They exchanged their newly acquired legs for fins but retained their lungs and became whales and porpoises, proving that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the water.

But back to the monkeys.

By-and-by it became apparent that some monkeys were smarter than others. These brainy monkeys used sticks and stones to hunt down the other not-so-brainy monkeys. The inventive primates eventually became human beings; the others remained happily in the trees.

To this day, the major occupation of human beings is an evolutionary holdover from our aggressive tree-swinging days---inventing ever more effective weapons to kill other human beings.

So there you have it. The story of creation from beginning to end as retold by evolutionists. It is a religion because like all other religions, it requires faith. It has no supporting evidence in either the fossil record or in the field of genetics; it is so because they---the faithful followers of this new religion---say it is so.

The odd twist is that rationalists have come full circle. They have become disciples of what they once decried: religion, the only religion without a god.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA

My late husband, Benjamin and I have been involved with establishing the Susquehanna County Recycling Center from its inception and I have served on the volunteer Recycling Committee for almost 14 years. Besides the universally- recognized environmental benefits from recycling, it locally reduces open burning by residents as well as roadside litter, including tires. The Center's existence helps to beautify the County. It also reduces, and for many of us, eliminates the expensive costs of paying private haulers to carry away our waste.

The Susquehanna County Recycling Center has been a model facility for the entire state. It continuously expands to accept more materials and now collects e-waste - TV's, computers, monitors, etc. The employees have always been courteous and helpful to the public; the Center has maintained clean, orderly and safe premises.

In 2006, it was estimated (DEP, R.W. Beck Report, on-line) that the recycling rate in Susquehanna County was 8 percent. With a population of roughly 42,000 residents, this would suggest that 3,360 residents are utilizing the Recycling Center, probably monthly. What other programs does our County support that directly benefit that many people? Why does recycling have to pay for itself when no other County Department is expected to do so? It is my understanding that, some years the facility itself has been in the black with the aid of DEP grants and other income.

The Commissioners may be opposed to a private facility charging residents to drop off their recyclables, but how could they enforce that view point? And if it fails privately, how difficult will it be to reestablish our recycling facility?

Selling our proven and successful recycling center seems like an enormous risk and loss to us all that our Commissioners should not even be considering.

Sincerely,

Joyce E. Stone

Dimock, PA