Boulder – A University of Colorado freshman has been arrested on charges that he was dealing prescription drugs from his dorm room.
James Michael Lea, a 19-year- old from St. Louis, was arrested early Sunday in his room after police discovered numerous bottles and boxes containing a variety of prescription drugs, plus an electronic scale, dozens of plastic bags and tools used to measure pills, according to a police report.
Officers also confiscated packets of suspected LSD, several marijuana pipes and a small amount of marijuana.
Lea was booked into the Boulder County Jail early Sunday on suspicion of 11 counts of drug possession with the intent to distribute 10 kinds of drugs. Those drugs included painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet and sleep aids such as Ambien and Lunesta.
In all, officers took about 80 items out of Lea’s room when they searched it Monday, CU police Lt. Tim McGraw said.
“It wasn’t like he had huge jarfuls of” the drugs, McGraw said. “But it was the packaging and some of the other things that led us to believe there was a distribution situation going on.”
Lea, who was released Monday on bail, has been arrested twice before on drug-possession and theft charges. Efforts to reach an attorney who represented him in those cases were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Lea’s arrest comes at a time of great concern at CU about alcohol and drug abuse, as well an increasing chatter among students about prescription-drug abuse. McGraw said his department hasn’t seen a great number of arrests related to prescription drugs, but he said officers are hearing about more students illegally buying and using prescription drugs to get high.
“This very well could be the tip of a drug iceberg,” McGraw said. “I doubt this guy just came across this stuff and decided to do this for the first time.”
Lea lives in Willard Hall, the same dorm in which Jesse Gomez, a CU freshman found dead in his room last month, lived. Officials have not determined how Gomez died, nor have they determined whether drugs or alcohol were involved.
It was happenstance that brought Lea to officers’ attention. Early Sunday, university security guards saw Lea’s roommate, Joshua Olson, passed out in the men’s room. Olson then got up, vomited and staggered back to his room, according to the police report.
The security guards called for a police officer, who went to the room to check on Olson. While trying to rouse Olson, the officer noticed drug paraphernalia in plain view in the room, the report says. Lea allowed police to search his room, according to the report, then showed officers some of the items that would be confiscated.
Paramedics examined Olson, who was not in any kind of danger. He was arrested Monday on suspicion of underage drinking and drug possession.
The peril that prescription-drug abuse poses on campus has not gone unnoticed on college campuses, both regionally and nationally. In December 2004, Colorado State University junior Bennett Bertoli died at a house party off campus after he combined liquor and painkillers.
Stephen Bentley, the coordinator of substance-abuse services at CU’s student health center, said his office has not seen great numbers of students suffering from prescription-drug addiction. But he said he hears talk among students that drugs are being used recreationally. That gives him and other campus officials great pause, especially for the possibility that students might mix the drugs with alcohol.
“It just reflects another level of distortion in thinking that this is something on the recreational level,” he said. “The potential is nasty. One and one makes three when you start to combine those two.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
