The amount of the pills available on the streets is in the millions. The company had to know the product was not just being distributed through the correct channels.
Actually the vast majority of the drug is gotten by legitimate perscriptions, forged percrips, foreign markets (i.e. Mexico) and internet perscriptions.... Is the drug manufacturer accountable? The drug itself was a godsend for people with chronic pain as it was the first pain reliever that effectively worked on a time released basis. Only when abused or crushed/snorted or injected is it a problem. Just as the Medical community was coming to grips with new protocal and treatments of pain this abuse happens (and not just Rush).... Lesson learned if it can be abused the people will.... Now people in chronic pain, cancer patients and others who need the medication and treatment will be affected. I don't know the answer.....
Biggles, you seem to be informed on the subject, and I definitely am not. When people abuse oxycontin, are they doing it to get a "high"? Or is it like a built up tolerance to pain killers, and the addicts have to keep taking more and more of it to alleve their actual pain (back pain, etc.)?
In the black market... The oxycotin pills are crushed and snorted, sometimes injected. The pill is vicoden plus (it is time released) so there is a load of pain reliever in the pill, much more than your normal pain pill (which is taken every 4-6 hours). It is crushed to break the time-release mechanism. The abuse and addiction comes from many reasons. First it is a legal drug so people don't think of addiction. Secondly usually it's perscribed to help a problem (pain). And the pills work very well. Finally certain people have addictive personalities and/or a genetic predisposition to addiction whether it's alcohol, pain pills, cigs, gambling, sex, etc. The main reason for this is an addiction to "feeling good" no matter what the consequenses. As far as breaking the addiction, it's tough both mentally and physically, especially to pills. I think the Movie, A Wonderful Mind, explained it best although it was an entirely different subject. At the end where he ignores the imaginary voices/friends that have been haunting him. He knows they will always be there, as will an addiction but he choose to ignore the voices and deal with his life....
I know from my experience of going out and about in and around the Baton Rouge and New Orleans night life... People out there are willing to trade MDMA (Extacy) for OxyContin's on a REGULAR basis... I have a pretty good idea about just how bad the problem with young people and extacy is, so to think that people would trade MDMA for OxyContin is a VERY troubling thought that it's 20 times easier to get ahold of than MDMA...
TE that is amazing... Hell it's the glue sniffers, Aerosol inhalers, gasoline smellers, Robitussin gulpers I don't understand.... And these are teenagers.... Once a legit medicine like OxyContin is bastardized for the high, the news travels fast...
Biggles, I agree with your sentiment... I never hung around the "drug" crowd in high school, but after becoming a young man over the age of 18, and especially after you turn 21 and going out around the Baton Rouge area, I realized how prevalent drug use was... What I didn't realize was what all those people in high school were talking about were what people were talking about around me at 21, 22, 23, and even now at 24... My best friend's fiance has a young brother who's a junior in high school. His friend was recently found face down in his bed, dead from a drug overdose, blood and foam flowing from his mouth... Seems that after the autopsy was done, it was estimate that this SIXTEEN year old kid had been doing drugs and had a steady demand and constant supply going through his system for at least 2 years... I'll admit that as a young man, I did more than my fair share of underage drinking...But, just a short 10 years after I began to sneak the first few nips off the Bottle of Jack and the Boone's Wild Island, kids that age are now far more advanced... In a short decade, we don't have high school freshmen who are EXPERIMENTING with drugs...we have high school freshmen who are VETERAN DRUG USERS. Addicts who haven't taken Algebra II. It amazes me at times...It's a FRIGHTENING increase in the rate of consumption and the a FRIGHTENING decrease in the age of the users... This is Livingston Parish I'm talking about, as well, people...
Just because Livingston Parish is mostly rural dosn't mean that the area is immune from drug problems. Hardly a week goes by that I don't read in the newspaper where a methamphetimine manufacturing operation is busted in Livingston or Tangipahoa Parishes. Rampant drug abuse is not confined to the inner city. It is everywhere. As a person of Baby Boomer age I have known that drugs of all kinds have been a part of the culture for a long time. I have known people who have ended up dead, in prison or have otherwise ruined their lives because of drugs. I also know lots of people who did every drug there was and drank to excess who have given up all drugs except for pot and are now productive citizens who still smoke pot every day. There may or may not be any scientific evidence to support this but I have seen enough to believe that drug addicition is the result of having an addictive personality, or an inability to stop oneself from going overboard. Drugs like marijuana and cocaine are not physically addicting but many users become psychologically dependent on them. Pain killers and the opiates like Heroin and morphine are physically addicting. Even during my wildest days pain killers were never a recreational drug of choice for me but I would take one or two now and then to kill a hangover. Following surgery a couple of years ago I went through progressively 50 oxycontins, 60 demerols and 90 Lortabs in 3 weeks. They were prescribed legitimately for the pain following my surgery and they worked to kill the pain but I have to admit they made me feel pretty damn good too. Once I had recovered from the surgery enough to not need pain medication I stopped taking them with no desire to continue. Maybe I am lucky that I didn't have to take them long enough to become dependent on them. I know other people who don't drink or take any kind of other drugs who are dependent on pain medication due to long time use due to chronic pain from things like automobile accidents. If I had chronic long term permament pain maybe I would be addicted to them too. So what is the answer? There are millions of people who would live in constant pain without drugs like oxycontin. With the billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry makes it should be possible for them to develope effective pain killing medication that dosen't cause people to become physically dependent upon the meds whether they are in pain or not. And while I'm on a rant here the pharmaceutical industry is ripping off every American who has to take any kind of presription drug bigtime. I just read a magazine article in U.S, News about a guy in Oklahoma who started a business called RxDepot. People would come into his store with their prescriptions and he would fax the presciptions to a Canadian pharmacist. The Canadian pharmacy would then Fedex the filled prescription to the customer and pay RxDepot a 10% commission. A typical price was about $30 for a months supply of medication that would cost up to $500 if it was filled by a pharmacy in the USA. Of course the state of Oklahoma found a way to shut RxDepot down so that a lot of people would either pay full price for their meds or do without them if they couldn't afford American prices. One of the meds I take costs $143 for a months supply here in Baton Rouge and thats for the generic. Last month friend of mine who was vacationing in Arizona called me and asked if I needed anything when he went to Mexico for a day. He got me a 6 months supply of the same medicene for $70. It was the same stuff manufactured by the same company who charges a fortune for it here. If they can afford to sell it cheap in Canada and Mexico why the hell does it cost so much in the USA?
