One step forward in the prescription opioid crisis:
NEW YORK (AP) — The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said it will stop marketing opioid drugs to doctors, bowing to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the company for helping trigger the current drug abuse epidemic.[...]
Purdue...acknowledged that its promotions exaggerated the drug's safety and minimized the risks of addiction. After federal investigations, the company and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 and agreed to pay more than $600 million for misleading the public about the risks of OxyContin. But the drug continued to rack up blockbuster sales.
One step backward in the Heroin crisis:
Danielle Novascone was hooked on OxyContin for about a year when it suddenly got a lot harder to get high.
For years, people like Novascone crushed the pills and snorted the powder for an instant fix. In 2010, OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, changed the opioid painkiller to supposedly stem the abuse epidemic it ignited. When new “abuse-deterrent” OxyContin was crushed, it would turn to jelly, Novascone said.
“It didn’t stop a damn thing,” she added.
Like a burglar confronted with a new safe, Novascone came up with novel methods to break in.
Novascone would shave the pills down with a metal file or chisel, then microwave or bake the jelly until it hardened, crush it and snort or inject it just like the old Oxy.
“It would take 45 minutes to set up one pill,” she said. “It became a pain in the ass.”
When Novascone realized she could buy heroin already in powder form at a fraction of the cost of OxyContin, she switched without hesitation.
A new study by Wharton School and the RAND Corporation contends that thousands of ex-Oxy users who switched to heroin have died as a result.
As much as 80 percent of the three-fold increase in heroin mortality since 2010 can be attributed to OxyContin’s reformulation, the study concluded.
Of all of America’s wars, past and present, the war on chronic pain is proving to the be one of the most complex and difficult ones ever. No easy answers and no easy fixes.