Oklahoma News Report

By Cathy Tatom:

I had a really great visit with Professor Lowenthal at NSU, Tahlequah. He showed me how he is using podcasts and You-Tube to give his students a better educational experience.

He’s putting enhanced lectures on the net to give students a new way to study using the high tech equipment they can’t seem to live without these days like smart phones, I-pads and laptop computers.

Check out the video, it’s a really cool way to keep up with school and Lowenthal says it’s possible for teachers of any grade level to create the same sorts of videos for very little money.

Oklahoma is at the top when it comes to prescription pain medication abuse. The finding comes from a new study ordered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Agencies working to curb the abuse tell OETA there are many reasons for the abuse. Doctors often prescribe a large number of highly addictive pain pills or write prescriptions that can be refilled multiple times. The prescriptions are written to deal with a legitimate medical problem, but the quantity sets the stage for addiction to occur.

Patients addicted to pain medications often go to multiple doctors to get pain medications prescribed by each one. The practice is called doctor shopping. The police chief in Chelsea was recently arrested for illegally obtaining thousands of pain pills by getting prescriptions from at least ten different doctors.

Or, doctors fail to warn patients of the addictive nature of pain medications.

To curb the problem, agencies like The Tulsa Area Prevention Resource Center and the Mental Health Association urge doctors to use the state’s voluntary program to track pain medication prescriptions. They’re also urging the legislature to make the program mandatory. Michael Brose of the Mental Health Association says, “I know there’ll be resistance to it because just the logistics and the hours and cost in implementing that, but we do know that for example with our meth issue that we’ve had long-standing one of the big things that really curtailed that was putting some mandates, legal mandates in terms of how much someone could actually obtain and they had to sign for it.”

THE FT. GIBSON NATIONAL CEMETREY IS ANTICIPATING UP TO ONE THOUSAND PEOPLE FROM ACROSS THE NATION WILL ATTEND THE FUNERAL FOR CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER DONALD WANN LATER THIS MONTH.
THE CEMETERY HAS BEEN AN OFFICIAL BURIAL PLACE FOR MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY SINCE SHORTLY AFTER THE CIVIL WAR…BUT IT EXISTED LONG BEFORE THAT TIME.
OETA’S CATHY TATOM REPORTS THANKS TO FEDERAL STIMULUS MONEY, THE CEMETERY IS GETTING SOME MUCH NEEDED RENOVATIONS.

I just spent a very interesting hour inside the Muskogee County Jail talking with the Sheriff about what’s behind the dramatic increase in the number of people being locked up.

Long story short:
1. The State Department of Corrections is at capasity and can’t accept more inmates until space opens up which leaves counties stuck with DOC prisoners they can’t transfer to the prison system.

2. Big cuts in funding for mental health services leaves many mentally ill people without the support services, housing and medications necessary to keep them healthy and productive. When they’re off their meds or unsupervised they often end up in jail because they’ve commited a crime or hurt someone else. Things mental health professionals and county sheriff’s say would not happen with proper care and case management.

3. Drugs..especially methamphetamine. I spoke with two women who are incarcerated at the Muskogee County jail. Each is in as a direct result of methamphetamine addiction and have spent years in and out of juvenile detention, county jails and the state prison system. They tell me with drug interdiction programs they likely would not be locked up. They also tell me they should be in state prison serving their time instead of the Muskogee County Jail, but because the prison system has no room for them they have to stay at the county level. They are sharing a pod designed for ten female inmates with anywhere from 30 to 50 women. Over-crowding means some women are sleeping on the concrete floor of the jail with just a blanket, no mattress. It’s distressing for the Sheriff, it’s frustrating for the inmates and it has the potential for sparking trouble between those who are incarcerated and for the jails that are overcrowded because they can be sanctioned by state and federal jail regulators.