HOULTON – The abuse of prescription painkillers, which has become the scourge of Washington County, has moved into the southern Aroostook County region as well.

On Thursday, agents with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and other area law enforcement agencies arrested 10 people on charges pertaining to the illegal distribution of prescription pain medications, including OxyContin.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s almost hard to find anything else,” Darrell O. Crandall, supervisor of the MDEA Houlton Task Force, said, referring to the decline in use of other illegal drugs in the southern Aroostook County region in favor of the stronger, opiate-based painkillers.

Other similar drugs turning up include hydrocodone and Darvocet.

“This is becoming the drug of choice around here,” Crandall said.

While 10 people were arrested Thursday, Crandall said other distributors are known to police and more arrests are likely.

All of the arrests were for the sale and distribution of Schedule W drugs, a class of drugs that includes prescription drugs, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Arrest for the sale of such drugs is automatically a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, if convicted.

Arrested Thursday and charged with aggravated trafficking in Schedule W drugs were: Timothy Bickford, 44, of Monticello and Wanda Kitchen, 44 of Houlton.

The charges were aggravated, Crandall said, because Bickford and Kitchen both have prior felony drug convictions in Maine.

The aggravated charge is a Class A felony which carries a minimum penalty of four years in prison up to a maximum of 40 years.

Arrested on Class B charges of trafficking in Schedule W drugs were: Valentine “Sam” Polchies, 38, of Houlton, two counts; Vicki McGary, 39, of Houlton; Dean “Skip” Brown, 55, of Littleton; Jeffrey Boyce, 33, of Houlton; Donald Cleary, 56, of Hodgdon, two counts; Billy Hanning, 46, of Houlton; and Dana Ross, 40, of Houlton.

Matthew Clark, 22, of Hodgdon was arrested on a Class C charge of unlawful furnishing of scheduled drugs, which carries a maximum five-year prison term, if convicted.

Kitchen and Polchies remained in jail Friday on $20,000 cash or $40,000 surety bail. Ross and Brown also remained in custody after failing to post $10,000 cash or $20,000 surety bail.

All of the others had been released on similar bail to those still being held, a jail spokesperson said.

The people arrested are expected to appear next Monday in 2nd District Court in Houlton.

The majority of those arrested Thursday are older.

“It started that way in Washington County with older people, but the younger ones picked it up,” said Crandall.

Thursday’s arrests resulted from a two-month investigation by the MDEA after agents and local police began receiving a great deal of information about abuse of prescription narcotic drugs and street sales of painkillers.

According to Crandall, all of those arrested were known to each other, though not necessarily working together as an organized ring.

“Once there is an established group of opiate abusers in an area, that group almost becomes a community within a community,” Crandall said. “It goes back and forth depending on who has the pills.”

The pills are obtained in many ways, he said, including theft of the drugs and forgery of prescriptions. In some cases, people who have legitimate prescriptions for the painkillers will try to convince a doctor or pharmacist that they need more. Sometimes, people with legitimate prescriptions will sell some of the pills to make extra money.

The pills can sell anywhere from $80 to $100 apiece on the street, Crandall said. That would mean that a person who has 30 pills could take in $2,400 to $3,000, all for the $10 insurance co-pay.

Crandall could not say what the impact of Thursday’s arrests would have on the sale and distribution of painkillers in the region, and it might take awhile for that to be known.

“It was a lot easier yesterday morning to buy a pill than today,” he said Friday.

Assisting the MDEA on Thursday were personnel from the Houlton Police Department, Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department, Maine State Police and the U.S. Border Patrol.