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AP News: Prescription drug abuse on the rise in Ohio.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – An illegal prescription drug trade is killing more Ohioans every year, and frustrated authorities say they don’t have enough resources to stop it, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The problem is statewide but particularly bad in southern Ohio, where high poverty makes the drug trade look lucrative.

As many as eight “pill mills” are operating in Scioto County, which is on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s watch list of the 10 most-significant places in the country for trafficking in illegal prescriptions for painkillers and other narcotics, according to a report in The Columbus Dispatch.

Deaths related to overdoses of prescription drugs have soared in Ohio by at least 280 percent in the past decade, up to 524 in 2008, the latest data available. Nationwide, about 7 million Americans are abusing prescription drugs, an 80 percent increase from 10 years ago.

“This is crazy, and it has to be stopped,” said Barbara Howard, a Portsmouth resident and member of a local drug task force. Her daughter, Leslie Cooper, died from an overdose in 2009.

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