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The new deadly ecstasy ...It was early on a Sunday morning, about 3½ years ago, a beautiful sunny day, when Brett fell from the roof of his suburban Chicago house and landed on concrete, 18 feet below, and broke his back.After years of rehabilitation, the pain was still so intense it would make him sick. He tried everything to dull it: narcotic painkillers, acupuncture, homeopathics. Nothing worked. Then he tried a relatively new drug, a sustained-release form of synthetic morphine called OxyContin. "My quality of life has improved immensely," Brett says, holding his daughter. "It's given me a whole bunch of life back." Timed-Release Painkiller Called a "breakthrough" for patients, OxyContin has found its way to stardom. In just six years on the market, it topped $1 billion in sales last year, becoming the No. 1 selling brand-name prescription painkiller. The reason: its sustained-release coating was a significant advance in keeping people out of pain for longer periods of time without taking another tablet. But it didn't take long for abusers to figure out that by crushing the tablet, then snorting or injecting it, they could get the full effect of the drug, meant to last 12 hours, in one hit. Because the drug is so valuable on the street and so easily obtained, it's a financial windfall for people tempted to sell their prescription. Who Can You Trust? "You take a 75-year-old man," said Dan Smoot, a detective with the Kentucky State Police. "He wouldn't have access to the cocaine, nor could he climb the mountain to plant marijuana. But he can sure go to the doctor." A one-month supply from the pharmacy can go for as much as $4,000 on the street. That put doctors in the uncomfortable position of questioning their patients. "There was a time when you would trust the patient, the patient was always right," lamented Dr. Joe Florence, who runs a health clinic in Hazard, Ky. "In this day and time we are not doing that." That effort to stop the flow to abusers has in effect stopped the flow to legitimate patients as well. Purdue-Pharma, of Stamford, Conn., which manufactures OxyContin, says that's going too far. "Every strong medication that is on the market legally in this country has an abuse potential, said David Haddox, Purdue-Pharma's medical director. "That's why they're called controlled substances." But OxyContin seems to be different. Federal officials say no prescription drug in the last 20 years has been so widely abused so soon after its release, wreaking havoc on many communities, especially Hazard, where more than half the inmates at a local county jail are in for OxyContin-related crimes. Kentucky state police already count 31 OxyContin-related fatalities this year, and that's just one state. Feds Hoping to Stem Tide The Drug Enforcement Administration says the problem is quickly spreading beyond the rural strongholds of Appalachia and into places like south Florida and New England. They have asked the company to limit the drug's distribution to doctors who specialize in pain, hoping to choke off the supply. The agency, along with the Food and Drug Administration, only has authority to make recommendations. It cannot force the company to change its policy. New Federal Initiative. That leaves patients like Donna Jetter, of Shepherdsville, Ky., who was hit by a car four years ago, with sparse access to an FDA-approved medication. "Once I say 'long-acting pain medication such as OxyContin,' it's like you immediately hit a brick wall," says Jetter. "They don't want to talk to you anymore." She says one doctor told her he couldn't give her the medication because she would become an addict and end up on skid row. "I'm in pursuit of anything that will help me live a normal life again." Even Haddox is frustrated. "When drug abusers determine the medical care for the rest of us, that is a travesty." So far, Johnson is lucky. OxyContin abuse has yet to hit his community. "I know there's other people like me," says Johnson. "This might be the only thing that could help them, because it's been the only thing that could help me." |
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 www.addiction-enders.com www.drugfreereferral.com www.newlifecentersf.org
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