From: Jonathan Davis (jon.davis@iomartdsl.com)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 15:39:54 MDT
From: http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,679985,00.html
"OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller that users crush - to disable its
patented time-release mechanism
- and then snort or inject for a powerful and immediate opiate high.
Legally, it's sold only by prescription for the treatment of chronic
pain.
...The earliest reported cases of OxyContin abuse were in rural Maine,
rust-belt counties in
western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio and the Appalachian areas of
Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. The problem travelled through
these regions, as word spread from town to town, county to county, up
and down the Appalachians. There are a few defining characteristics that
the first affected regions share: they're home to large populations of
disabled and chronically ill people who are in need of pain relief;
they're marked by high unemployment and a lack of economic opportunity;
they're remote; and they are areas where prescription drugs have been
abused in the past. 'There's always been a certain degree of
prescription-drug abuse in this area,' says Art Van Zee, a physician in
Lee County, Virginia, 'but there's never been anything like this. This
is something that is very different and very new, and we don't
understand all the reasons why. This is not just people who have
long-term, substance-abuse problems. In our region, this is young
teenagers, 13 and 14-year-olds, experimenting with recreational drug use
and becoming addicted.'
...Although heroin and OxyContin have a similar unhappy effect on the
lives of the people addicted
to them, there is a critical and simple difference between the two:
heroin is illegal; OxyContin, when used as directed, is legal. More than
that: the pill is made by Purdue Pharma, a successful and well-regarded
pharmaceutical company, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. It is
prescribed to 1m patients in the US for the treatment of chronic pain,
and it is closely regulated at every stage of its manufacture and
distribution by the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug
Enforcement Administration.
...This fact has meant a major conceptual shift for law-enforcement
officials, who are used to
combating narcotics produced by international drug lords, not
international corporations. As Scott Walker, the director of Layne
House, a drug treatment facility in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, says: 'You
don't have the Coast Guard chasing OxyContin ships. This isn't something
you can stop at the border. It's growing from within.'
...Part of what makes the spread of OxyContin abuse so difficult to
track, let alone to stop, is that
the drug moves not physically but conceptually. When crack cocaine
spread from the big cities on either coast toward the centre of the US,
it travelled gradually, city by city. OxyContin abuse pops up suddenly,
in unexpected locations: Kenai, Alaska; Tucson; West Palm Beach,
Florida. At the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa, a suburb of
Pittsburgh, Jay, a recovering OxyContin addict and a former small-time
dealer, offered an explanation for OxyContin's sudden geographical
shifts. 'It's the idea that passes on,' he told me. 'That's how it
spreads. There aren't mules running the drug across the country. It's
dealt by word of mouth. I call a friend in Colorado and explain it to
him: "Hey, I've got this crazy pill, an OC 80, an OC 40. You've got to
go to the doctor and get it. Tell him your back hurts."'
...Unlike heroin, Jay explained, OxyContin doesn't require investment or
muscle or manpower to move across the country. OxyContin abuse is a
contagious idea - a meme, if you will. Because OxyContin, the medicine,
is readily available in pharmacies everywhere, all it takes to bring
OxyContin, the drug, to a new place is a persuasive talker like Jay."
------------
Regards
Jonathan
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