http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0930/Boeing-drug-bust-shows-alarming-spread-of-prescription-pill-epidemic<snip>
The arrests of three dozen former and current Boeing employees on Thursday for illicitly peddling prescription pills at a defense contracting plant near Philadelphia yielded a telling detail: Investigators said there was no kingpin, but rather a "nebulous" system of suppliers bringing pills into a central marketplace.
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The bust rose to national prominence largely because of what the suspects worked on: military aircraft like the Chinook and Osprey. Boeing said that it had monitored the employees since it began cooperating with federal agents in 2007 and that no accidents had resulted from the employees' work. The company commended law enforcement "for their rigorous and thorough investigation."
Still, the profile of the suspects – mainly middle-aged male workers from small, blue-collar towns – and the decentralized supply system highlight the challenge facing law enforcement in dealing with a growing national addiction to prescription opioids like Oxycontin.
At the very least, cases like the Boeing arrests are likely to play into a deepening understanding of how the prescription pill epidemic has spread – and how it differs from other epidemics such as the crack epidemic of the 1980s, driven mostly by corner dealers, and the meth epidemic, which functions largely via small networks that resemble social clubs around a small meth lab.
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