Rx4Life gets hospital support. (September 20, 2007)

In a show of community support and recognition, St. Joseph Hospital awarded the Chewelah-area group, Prescriptions for Life, $5,000 from the hospital’s Community Benefit Fund last week. The funds will support the group’s efforts to “eliminate pain medication abuse in the local community and to provide pain medication monitoring and treatment options.”   Read more...

Grass-roots group gets prevention award (July 20, 2007)

The Chewelah-area group, Prescriptions for Life, recently received the “Random Acts of Prevention” award from the Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council in recognition of the group’s efforts at preventing prescription pain medication abuse. “We were so impressed with how the Prescriptions for Life group rallied around a family and at the same time saw the bigger issue in the community,” said Lisa Demke, Drug-Free Communities Coordinator for the Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council (GSSAC) Prevention Center. “They took the grass-roots approach and just went for it.”  Read more...

Foster Teen died of accidental overdose, report says. (Spokesman-Review; May 10, 2007)

A Native American foster child died of an accidental overdose of prescription methadone, the Stevens County Coroner said on Wednesday. Robley "Bobby" Carr Jr., 15, died in December at his home near Valley, Wash. His foster father has a prescription for methadone for a back injury, but it could not be determined where Carr obtained the painkiller.  Read more...

Local group to speak at regional health conference (March 13, 2007)

The Chewelah-area group, Prescriptions For Life, has been invited to speak at the Northwest Region Rural Health Conference in Spokane on March 22. According to the Washington State Office of Community and Rural Health, the group will be providing the “on-the-ground, grass-roots community response to the issue of prescription drug abuse in Washington state, particularly in rural areas.”  Read more...

Searching for Solutions (Spokesman-Review; February 4, 2007)

A 12-year-old brings hydrocodone tablets to a middle-school slumber party. A high-schooler steals methadone pills from her parents' medicine cabinet. A 21-year-old cuts open a 12-hour Fentanyl patch, squeezes the drug onto tinfoil, and smokes the entire contents through a "tooter," the stripped plastic cartridge from a Bic pen.  Read more...

Deadly Prescriptions (Spokesman-Review; February 4, 2007)

Deaths from prescription painkillers have soared in Spokane and across Washington during the past decade, according to new research that warns of danger as close as the bathroom medicine cabinet. Popular drugs such as hydrocodone and methadone fueled an 800 percent increase in statewide deaths linked to prescription opiates, which jumped from 45 in 1995 to 411 in 2004, state health researchers found.  Read more...

Little relief in sight for painkiller addicts: Only one doctor in region willing to prescribe Suboxone. (Spokesman-Review; December 16, 2007)

Pent-up demand for a drug that helps addicts kick prescription painkillers has prompted a new federal law that more than triples the number of users each doctor can treat. But new rules expanding the use of buprenorphine – sold as Suboxone or Subutex – will put barely a dent in the need in the Inland Northwest, experts said.   Read more...

Indian youth's death ends a troubled life. (Spokesman-Review; December 16, 2006)

Even in death, the fate of Robley "Bobby" Carr Jr., remains unclear. This afternoon, in a small memorial at an evangelical church near this Stevens County town, Bobby's friends and family will gather to remember a teenage foster child and his traumatic life. After that, it's uncertain where the body of the 15-year-old will be interred. Bobby's foster father, Steve Horton, said he is unsure whether the boy will be buried near his hometown, or hundreds of miles away on an Indian reservation in Western Washington.  Read more...

Local grassroots group seeks to stem abuse of prescription pain medication. (September 1, 2006)

“There is a perception that since it comes from a doctor, it is safe,” says Jim Tilla, a Chewelah area resident who has seen firsthand the consequences of the abuse of pain killing medication. “It steals life away from a person.” Tilla explained that the most widely abused pain medications include OxyContin, Oxycodone, and Hydrocodone. “These drugs are synthetic heroin and horribly addictive,” Tilla added. “I’ve seen abuse take lives and destroy families.” Tilla is the catalyst for the newly-formed group Prescriptions for Life, a grassroots organization in Chewelah seeking to educate the public – especially parents and children – about the dangers of prescription drug abuse.  Read more...