I was up in West Virginia last week visiting my brother who works in federal law enforcement. The news up there was dominated by the mine tragedy, which hit his community particularly hard.

When I asked about other local issues, I learned there is another, widespread and ongoing tragedy occurring daily from the remote mountain hollers to the small towns of the state where it seems just about everything is named after Sen. Robert Byrd, and it's spreading much faster than some people realize.

It's the widespread abuse of prescription drugs, Class III narcotics such as hydrocodone (Lortab) and Xanax, helped along by many factors including an illicit black market - called the Pill Trail or the Pill Pipeline by law enforcement - that stretches from south Florida through the Appalachians and points north.

And it's pertinent to us here in Cobb County, where we've only recently begun to learn more about the "pain clinics" that help supply the trail, contributing to widespread drug addiction and a skyrocketing accidental overdose rate.

In my brother's state, where clinics have been a persistent problem for about a decade, the overdose or poisoning rate doubled between 1999 and 2006, prompting lots of scrutiny of the clinics.

According to the CDC, unintentional overdoses of prescription drugs claim more lives of adults age 40 to 49 than cocaine and heroine combined. The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report says drug poisonings are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. This doesn't even address the cascading effects of such addictions, i.e. teen abuse, car accidents, neglected or abandoned children and domestic violence.

Prescription drug addicts in Appalachia and along the Pill Trail, including West Virginia, are in mostly white, rural areas. Public corruption and crime rates have skyrocketed where "pain clinics" exist, and lives already made hard by economic and social conditions grow even more hopeless under the drug haze they enable or promote.

"A good portion of our population is driving around stoned," said my brother, who is in a position to see the tragic consequences of prescription drug abuse almost daily.

"Instead of getting a good doctor to diagnose and treat the source of their pain, people are doctor shopping or going to these so-called clinics.

Then there's the money end - the operators and out of state drug couriers who line up around the building at all hours, not to mention the public corruption the whole operation inevitably breeds."

Most, like the recently closed Kennesaw Pain Express, operate out of storefronts near interstate corridors and advertise on the Internet. I was surprised to run across their ad and Web site last week while reading in the Charleston Gazette about West Virginia doctors, physician's assistants and office managers busted recently by state and federal authorities who found millions of dollars hidden in their bedrooms.

The ad in the online Gazette, by the way, did not indicate the Kennesaw location has been closed down, nor did the phone recording, which told me to leave a message for an appointment.

The "clinics," which originated in and around Florida's Broward County - there are currently 115 open there - are usually owned and managed by sketchy medical personnel, many who've had repeated problems with their state medical boards. One West Virginia doctor issued an unbelievable 188,445 prescriptions since 2002. In 2009 alone, she issued 17,000 and the FBI agent in charge said the condition of her office made it "physically impossible to utilize her examination tables," meaning she just handed out the scripts like candy at Halloween.

People pay cash, I'm told, usually $450 for their first visit and $150 for subsequent visits, but often times Medicaid or Medicare is billed fraudulently. That's YOUR tax dollars ruining the lives of abusers and making pushers wealthy.

And pharmacies even get in on the scam, such as the one in tiny Kermit, West Va., which the Gazette reports sold an amazing 3.2 million hydrocodone pills in 2006 compared with a national average of 97,431 per pharmacy.

As our local municipalities and public officials debate how to regulate these so-called clinics, I hope they'll take a good look at what states such as West Virginia have experienced. I have a hunch most Cobb citizens, once informed, will have no desire to become the latest link in the Pill Trail chain, and will make their desires known.

Lbarstrong3378@comcast.net