Story Photos
 Photo by Roger Werth Castle Rock police officer Branden McNew carries bags of evidence out of the home of Baron Lohner Wednesday morning. Lohner was arrested later in Kalama. McNew is flanked by sheriff's trainee Cory Robinson and deputy Jennifer Prusa. |
2006 pot bust got ball rolling
Thursday, August 9, 2007 6:59 AM PDT
By Leslie Slape
Printable version
E-mail this articleThis area's first prescription drug sweep began with a marijuana bust in June 2006.
"I arrested a guy on marijuana and found out he was a big pill guy," said the lead investigator on the case, an undercover agent with the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Narcotics Task Force.
He decided to begin investigating prescription drug trafficking, and he soon found out what the fellow meant by "big." Before long the agent had so many contacts in the pill world that "I couldn't keep up with the buys," he said. "If I dropped everything every time a buy came up, I wouldn't do anything else."
Pill dealing varies a bit from other narcotics trafficking, he said. There's nothing to import, nothing to grow, and nothing to mix up in a personal lab. Instead, dealers get their pills in a variety of ways, including stealing from medicine cabinets, faking illnesses to get prescriptions, forging prescriptions, breaking into pharmacies, or selling their own legitimate prescriptions and then reporting them stolen to get refills.
He handled a few undercover buys personally -- most of the time he used confidential informants -- and said he didn't find it dangerous.
"With pills, you don't generally see the same type of dealer as a tweaker," he said, "but they are just as desperate."
That aside, the black market for pills is the "same type of culture as meth addiction," he said. "The physical needs are just as strong as meth."
The users commit the same types of crimes to get money for dope, he said. The users are younger and they look more harmless, but they're no different from any other addicts, he said.
Because there's no single or primary source of supply, he couldn't target a kingpin pill pusher. But there are a lot of big players, the agent said. During his investigation, he identified six to 12 "very significant" pill dealers locally and 50 to 100 people he considered viable targets for investigation.
Due to the scope of the investigation, the task force brought it to the attention of the U.S. Attorney's Office in November. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration assisted with information and coordination of resources, he said.
Agents made some arrests, but the courts didn't dish out harsh penalties. Someone who's arrested with one or two pills is perceived as a user, not a dealer, he said.
For example, in February Woodland police arrested Dallas DeLaGrange for shoplifting and found a morphine pill in his pocket. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one day in jail.
"It's downplayed," the agent said. "People think prescription pills are OK to abuse. The mindset is 'We're not too concerned.'"
What people fail to realize is that a person who has one pill today might have sold 900 yesterday, he said.
Agents decided to serve a large number of warrants at once to draw the community's attention. DeLaGrange is one of the 20 suspects agents arrested Wednesday on suspicion of selling prescription drugs.
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