edgarshade
Bluelighter
Register Herald
By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter
http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x1533029538/Youths-partying-ways-have-changed-from-beer-fests-to-pill-parties
BECKLEY — A generation ago, the younger set let off steam by assembling on a weekends for beer fests.
By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter
http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x1533029538/Youths-partying-ways-have-changed-from-beer-fests-to-pill-parties
BECKLEY — A generation ago, the younger set let off steam by assembling on a weekends for beer fests.
Times have changes, especially in southern West Virginia, and the brewsky has been replaced with a pill, an opiate that provides the abuser with the desired high and temporary escape from the trials of life. For some, though, as U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin sadly tells, the escape is permanent. “Instead of having beer parties, the kids are having pill parties,” says Goodwin, who has led an intensive effort in recent months to stem the tide of prescription pill abuse. Many in the concentrated war consider pill abuse a societal ill of epidemic proportions, pointing to sudden deaths linked to opiates, especially among the young.
“We’ve got to get the word out to these kids of the dangers that are associated with prescription drugs,” Goodwin said. “They think these drugs are safer than street drugs. They think, ‘Heck, you get them from a pharmacy, they’re prescribed by a doctor, so they must be safe.’ That’s not necessarily the case. They’re every bit as dangerous, if not more so, these prescription opiates.”
Goodwin is counting on a multi-faceted attack to the drug problem, with a heavy emphasis on education, along with treatment and rehabilitation, rather than locking up addicts with prisons and jails already bulging at the seams with inmates. “It costs about $30,000 a year to lock somebody up,” the U.S. attorney said. “We don’t have $30,000 to lock everybody up. It’s not the best use of our money. We need to do something to prevent our way out of this mess, rather than arrest our way out of it.”

obviously, I still don't get it! Help me out?