![\"Michigan](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2022\/06\/15\/NPNR\/d9d85604-3505-4933-8f1f-eb3e06951c25-Ken_Mills-_SANE_Appreciation.jpg?width=660&height=441&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\nGAYLORD\u00a0\u2014 Ken Mills has spent over 35 years in law enforcement, including the last 20 with the\u00a0Straits Area Narcotics Enforcement (SANE) drug task force.<\/p>\n
Mills said there are two components of drug abuse that have made it historically a difficult problem to deal with \u2014 the addictive nature of the substances and the profit motive that comes from selling drugs.<\/p>\n
“It’s a tough combination to beat,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mills, a detective lieutenant with the task force, will retire from the field at the end of the month. SANE serves the counties of Cheboygan, Emmet and Otsego in Northern Michigan. Law enforcement departments in those counties assign officers to SANE and pay their salary. Grant funding covers the other expenses.<\/p>\n
“Nobody wants to become an addict and many of them start\u00a0out by saying, ‘I can control this,'” Mills said. “Of course almost all of them fail at that.”<\/p>\n\n
The narcotics trade has evolved over the years in the region, said Mills. In the late 1990s the abuse of prescription drugs, especially\u00a0Oxycodone or OxyContin, a medication\u00a0used to help relieve severe ongoing pain such as the pain\u00a0that comes from cancer, was most prevalent.<\/p>\n
“Once we started seeing OxyContin\u00a0and how addictive it was, we knew it was going to be a big problem,” Mills said. “When I was assigned to SANE in 2002 we worked with the medical field and treatment providers to come up with a plan to address that.”<\/p>\n\n
More:<\/strong>Gaylord residents face drug charges following arrest by SANE<\/a><\/p>\n More:<\/strong>Meth addiction is rising in northern Michigan communities. Here’s why.<\/a><\/p>\n The profit motive lured many into selling part of their prescriptions, especially in a rural area like Northern Michigan, noted Mills.<\/p>\n “The people up here who had the prescriptions knew they could make money by selling it on the street,” he said.<\/p>\n\n Eventually heroin became more popular because it was cheaper, Mills said. Heroin evolved into being laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times stronger than morphine.\u00a0Fentanyl is added to heroin to increase its potency, or be disguised as highly potent heroin.<\/p>\n “You hear a lot about overdose deaths and a lot of times it is related to fentanyl,” said Mills.\u00a0<\/p>\n “In the mid 2000s we had a lot of cocaine. We were buying crack cocaine and powder cocaine. A lot of our investigations were going out of state or in urban areas because that is where it came from. We have a three-year period where we had almost 100 arrest counts for the distribution of cocaine and we still see it today,” Mills said.<\/p>\n Mills said SANE started seeing crystal meth, the common name for\u00a0crystal methamphetamine, a strong and highly addictive drug that affects the central\u00a0nervous system, a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n “It’s cheap and the price hasn’t changed that much,” he said. “People go downstate and get it fairly cheap and then come up here and sell it.”<\/p>\n Gaylord Police Chief Frank Claeys, who worked with Mills on cases and now is the chairman of the SANE board, called him “the backbone of narcotics law enforcement in Northern Michigan. For 20 years he has mentored countless officers and a lot of them have gone on to prominent positions in their departments once they return from the assignment,” he said.<\/p>\n![\"Ken](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2022\/06\/05\/NPNR\/d32e7826-de03-41fe-93bc-432553a2f2d1-Mills_Kenneth.JPG?width=300&height=452&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")