12.29.11
by Steven H. Kurlander
Several drug companies are completing FDA trials to introduce a new, much stronger form of Oxycodone to the $10 billion opiate prescription drug market in 2013.
Unlike the over 400 opiate pain killers already on the market that blend the powerful narcotic with other medications, the new drug is solely composed of pure Oxycodone. It will be very potent, delivering up to 10 times more pain relief than present prescriptions.
The illegal use of prescription drugs is an epidemic according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Institute of Drug Abuse, or NIDA, estimates that 7 million Americans, mostly young adults, regularly abuse prescription drugs. According to the DEA, more Americans illegally take prescription drugs than those using cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin combined.
The DEA also says that Oxycodone - which produces great euphoria and pleasure like morphine, heroin and other opioids - is the most illegally taken prescription pill in the US. NIDA found that 1 in 20 high school seniors reported abusing OxyContin in 2010, a popular brand of Oxycodone.
Drug deaths from opiates are estimated to exceed auto and gun accident fatalities. In Florida, where 85 percent of Oxycodone is distributed, it was estimated that at the beginning of 2011, 7 Floridians died a day from overdoses from the drug-a figure up over 25 percent from 2010.
The development and marketing of a pure, more powerful form of the narcotic spells nothing but more trouble for Americans already struggling with rampant Oxycodone abuse.
The severity of the Oxycodone problem is being addressed to some extent by Federal and state officials. The DEA and a number of states, including Florida, recently initiated crackdowns resulting in the numerous arrests of owners and doctors associated with pain clinics and the closures of these pill mills. Tougher laws that included greater regulation of the sale of prescription drugs and the banning of advertising by pain clinics were also passed.
A number of states also instituted monitoring programs of prescription drugs to allow regulatory boards to identify doctors overprescribing pain medicine and patients receiving pain pills from different doctors (Florida was not one of them).
When used legitimately, Oxycodone is an effective, semi-synthetic opiate pain killer that can be used safely in large quantities over long periods of time. To its rightful users, Oxycodone provides tremendous pain relief to chronic pain caused by cancer, osteoarthritis, post-herpetic neuralgia, major surgery and degenerative spine disease.
With the introduction of a purer, more powerful version of this legal narcotic close at hand, now is the time to question whether the pain management benefit from a more powerfully addictive Oxycodone - and its promising profitability - should override the great harm that the narcotic presents American society in light of its epidemic misuse, particularly by American teenagers.
We also need to ask how the United States can outlaw the use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other illegal substances while at the same time condone the development and sale of a more potent form of Oxycodone that promises to be even more destructive and costly than any of those drugs.
With hundreds of pain management drugs are the market already available to pain victims, other than making big money from a form of Oxycodone with more of a kick, there is really no overriding legitimate need for this super opiate pain management pill.
The continued enhancement of Oxycodone mandates a new line of attack not only against those illegally taking or dealing the pills, but the drug manufacturers, too.
The drug's approval should not only be based alone on its safety to consumers in need of pain relief, but also conditioned upon the payment of impact fees to states that would cover law enforcement and medical costs associated with its predictive illegal use.
If tobacco companies are forced to contribute a portion of each sale of a cigarette pack to pay for the effort to curb tobacco use and the financial and medical consequences cause by American smoking cigarettes, why not the manufacturers of the most abused addictive prescriptive drug in the United States?
It is time to make politically powerful drug companies responsible and accountable for their destructive products. They, not U.S. taxpayers, should have to bear the brunt of the financial and social burdens from rampant illegal misuse of Oxycodone.
There are already too many appalling side effects being endured by Americans from Oxycodone.
Our terrible pain needs to be counted too in both the calculation of profit and the approval process to allow an enhanced version of it into the marketplace -Kurly | Comment |
This op-ed was published on December 29, 2011 n the Sun Sentinel
