Hepatitis C; Hillbilly Heroin "Oxycodone" a pill epidemic

Today this blog looks at the sad reality of drug abuse, fueled by a legal prescription drug.

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.In places like Portsmouth,Ohio, Florida , Kentucky , Ontario,Canada, and even in your home town OxyContin has become today's drug of choice.

With the majority of users injecting the drug, overdosing isn't uncommon nor is the transmission of the deadly disease; Hepatitis C.

Prescription drug use has become a national crisis according to a 2010 released White House study revealing that between "1998 and 2008" substance abuse treatment admissions for prescription pain relievers increased by 400 percent.

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This 2009 documentary from "Vanguard" reports on Florida's epidemic.

Hillbilly Heroin "Trailer" From Vanguard

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Watch the complete 45 minute video "here"

In the season premiere of Vanguard, correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to South Florida, the "Colombia of prescription drugs", to expose a bustling pill pipeline that stretches from the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale to the rolling hills of Appalachia. "The OxyContin Express" features intimate access with pill addicts, prisoners and law enforcement as each struggles with a growing national epidemic. .

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In The News

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Sons and daughters, lost to a pill epidemic

March 6th

Each day in Florida, seven people on average take a fatal dose of prescription drugs. Over the years, lax regulation has helped to create a landscape of storefront pain clinics operating in nondescript shopping plazas, dispensing millions of pills with little — or no — medical reason. In Broward alone, more than one million pills are dispensed every month, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. And most mornings, dozens of buyers line up outside the county’s 130 clinics. They leave in vehicles with tags from Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and other eastern states, with pills to use and resell. In the first half of 2010 alone, doctors in Florida doled out nine times more oxycodone than in the rest of the entire United States during the same time frame...

Continue Reading.....

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Sarasota congressman's bill seeks pill mill crackdown
March 4th Full story: News Press SARASOTA - A Florida congressman is unveiling legislation to crack down on illegal pill mills with longer prison sentences and steeper fines.

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28 Drug Suspects Arrested
March 4th Full story: WTAJ Acting Attorney General Bill Ryan said the arrests are the result of a six month investigation into the street-level dealings of cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana, LSD and the powerful prescription drugs Percocet, Oxycontin, Morphine, Soma, and Roxicodone.

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Florida doctor pleads guilty to helping Eastern Kentucky prescription-drug ring
Full story: Lexington Herald-Leader
A Florida doctor has admitted he took part in stoking the crippling abuse of prescription drugs in Eastern Kentucky by writing prescriptions for 25,000 pain pills to people in a drug ring.

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Young lives wrecked by prescription drug epidemic in Southern Ohio "Such is life in Scioto County, a Southern Ohio county on the Ohio river where a prescription drug epidemic crosses all socioeconomic lines, wrecking young lives from ramshackle trailer parks to cushy suburban homes. The pain pills come in varying forms and dosages, but there is no question which one is king -- OxyContin, the fifth most prescribed drug in the world. Fueled in part by a half-dozen legally operating pain clinics that dot Scioto County, doling out an estimated 35 million pills a year, the prescription drug problem has taken its toll in numerous ways: spiraling hepatitis C rates, a thriving pill-based underground economy and nearly one in 10 babies born addicted to drugs"

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Teen pill-poppers on the rise: survey
Full story: Montreal Gazette
Recreational use of painkiller OxyContin jumps in Eastern Ontario, even as it levels off in rest of province Photograph by: Jeff Siner, The Charlotte Observer One in five Eastern Ontario high-school students has taken highly addictive painkillers such as OxyContin, Percocet and Demerol.

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The history of OxyContin reformulation
February 28, 2011
By Dr. Jana Burson, MD

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OxyContin – The perfect pain management drug?
The manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, originally marketed OxyContin as an appropriate treatment for chronic, moderate to severe, non-cancer pain. In the past, such strong opioids were used only for intractable, severe pain. So how did we end up with a national prescription pill problem and opiate addiction in rural areas? Following is a brief history of what has happened since OxyContin was introduced as a pain management drug in 1996.

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Why OxyContin abuse skyrocketed
OxyContin’s release onto the market in 1996 coincided with a national movement to encourage doctors to treat pain more aggressively. The drug manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, originally thought the drug unattractive for addicts due to a time-release coating. But soon people found ways to crush the pills to snort or inject. These two events, added to the tendency of U.S. citizens to share prescription medications, gave perfect recipe for an opioid addiction disaster. At that time, few states had prescription monitoring programs, which also allowed the problem to grow and fester. Addicts could obtain opioid prescriptions from more than one doctor at a time, with no way for the doctor to detect the problem.

OxyContin was marketed aggressively to small town family doctors who didn’t have much experience treating chronic pain with powerful opioids. Few had the training to identify or treat addiction when it did develop. Rural areas had few places doctors could send patients who developed problems with opioid pain medications. By 2003, primary care doctors, with little or no experience or training in the treatment of long-term pain or addiction were prescribing about half of all the OxyContin prescriptions written in the country. (1)

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Components of systemic opioid addiction

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1. A national movement to encourage doctors to treat pain more aggressively

2. Addicts’ removal of time-release coating underestimated

3. Tendency of U.S. citizens to share prescription medications

4. Few prescription monitoring programs at the state level

5. Primary care doctors without pain management or addiction experience prescribe OxyContin

6. Misleading or false statements from the drug manufacturer
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How Purdue Pharma misled the public about OxyContin
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Purdue Pharma trained its sales representatives to make deceptive statements. Besides telling doctors that the drug was less likely to be abused, the sales representatives also gave false information about the risks of opioid withdrawal after stopping the pill. By 2003, the FDA had cited Purdue Pharma twice, for using misleading information in its promotional advertisements to doctors. (2)OxyContin became such a commonly known drug to both abusers and the media that the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) asked for a report about the promotion of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma, information on factors affecting its abuse and diversion, and recommendations of how to curtail its misuse. This report, released in 2003, stated that by 2001, the sales of OxyContin were over 1 billion dollars per year, making it the most commonly prescribed brand of opioid medication for moderate to severe pain. (2)
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In May of 2007, three officers of Purdue Pharma, a privately held company, pled guilty to misleading the public about the drug’s safety. Their chief executive officer, general counsel, and chief scientific officer pled guilty, as individuals, to misbranding a pharmaceutical. The executives did not serve jail time. Though they plead guilty, they claimed they personally had done nothing wrong, but accepted blame under the premise that an executive is responsible for the acts of the employees working under him. (3) The three executives’ fines totaled 34.5 million dollars, to be paid to Virginia, the state that brought the lawsuit.
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Purdue Pharma agreed to pay a fine of $600 million. Though this is one of the largest amounts paid by a drug company for illegal marketing, Purdue made 2.8 billion dollars in sales revenue, from the time of its release in 1996 until 2001 alone.
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Purdue Pharma has donated money towards helping communities treat opioid addiction, and has paid money as ordered by the court. Much of the $600 million award will go to states heavily afflicted by OxyContin addiction. This money will help to establish programs to help prevent and treat opioid addiction.
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The reformulation of OxyContin – Is it harder for addicts to use?
At the congressional hearing in 2002, a Purdue Pharma representative said that the company was working on a re-formulation of OxyContin, to make it harder to use intravenously. This representative said they expected to have the re-formulated pill on the market within a few years. (4)

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In 2010, this new preparation was finally released. It contains a substance that makes the pill turn into a gluey resin, difficult to snort or inject. Addicts don’t like the new OxyContin. They can’t inject this form of OxyContin, and it has a lower street value.
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Is OxyContin good or evil?
Like most strong medications, OxyContin can be used correctly for pain management, or can be misused and cause harm to people and their families. Do you think OxyContin is bad or evil? Is it too addictive or caused too many social problems? And what about manufacturers of opioid medications? How liable should they be for the addictive effects of drugs? But is OxyContin the problem? And how can we all work to reduce the risk of addiction to prescription drugs?
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Reference sources:
1. Barry Meier, Pain Killer: A “Wonder” Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death (Rodale Books, 2003)2. General Accounting Office OxyContin Abuse and Diversion report GAO-04-110, 2003.3. Washington Times, “Company Admits Painkiller Deceit,” May 11, 2007.4. United States Senate. Congressional hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on Examining the Effects of the Painkiller OxyContin, 107th Congress, Second Session, February, 2002.

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