Thursday, December 29, 2005

Abuse of Drug OxyContin in FDA's: Prescription Drug Use and Abuse

The FDA published a article Prescription Drug Use and Abuse by Michelle meadows in the September-October 2001 issue of the FDA Consumer magazine. The section on OxyContin follows:

OxyContin (oxycodone), a controlled drug approved in 1995 to treat chronic, moderate-to-severe pain, has received considerable attention because of deaths and crimes associated with its abuse. (For more on the classes--or schedule--of drugs, see "Controlled Substances".) OxyContin is a morphine-like narcotic that contains a high dose of oxycodone. Manufactured by Purdue Pharma, Stamford, Conn., the drug was originally believed to pose a lower risk for abuse because it is a controlled-release drug designed to be taken orally and swallowed whole, says Deborah Leiderman, M.D., director of the Food and Drug Administration's controlled substance staff. The drug's active ingredient, oxycodone, is slowly released over a 12-hour period. "But the safety of the drug is based on taking the drug exactly as intended," she says.

Abusers sometimes disrupt the time-release formula of the drug to speed up absorption, often chewing the tablets, crushing them and snorting the powder, or dissolving them in water and injecting the drug to get a fast high. Abusers have also used OxyContin with other painkillers, alcohol, and marijuana. Several deaths have resulted, mostly in rural areas of the Eastern United States, especially in Virginia and West Virginia.

Other products containing oxycodone such as Percodan and Percocet have also been abused over the years. Abuse of opiates is not new; what's new is the recent surge in local epidemics of opiate abuse (see "Most Commonly Abused").


This article is almost 5 years old. OxyContin Abuse is becoming a real problem that we need to stop.

1 Comments:

At Friday, October 24, 2008 1:39:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi My Community in Mukilteo, Washington is started a Citizens Action Committee broken into power teams to create solution based ideas from Education,Medical,Recovery,Legal and Criminal Justice issues. If you would like more information on how we are putting our power teams together for Schools and our Community please email us at
stopoxyabuse@gmail.com..

 

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