Miners Caught in Western Va.'s Spiraling Rates of Painkiller Abuse

[donsu]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/12/ST2008011201184.html?hpid=moreheadlines


A Dark Addiction


The crowd is gathering early in the dirt parking lot outside the Clinch Valley Treatment Center, the only methadone clinic within 80 miles. Third in line, Jeff Trapp smokes Winstons in his pickup, watching the cars turn off the highway and settle behind him, tires crunching on cold gravel, headlights glaring. It is 2:45 a.m., and Trapp has been awake for two hours. The clinic does not start dosing until 5.

Like Trapp, many of the patients who filled the lot one recent morning have jobs at far-off mines that start at 6 or 7. They sleep upright in their vehicles, slumped against the steering wheel, dressed for work in steel-toed black boots and coveralls lined with orange reflective strips. Dark rings circle their eyes where the previous day's coal dust didn't wash off.

"Everybody you see here works," says Trapp, his smoke-cured voice a low rumble. A $14 plug-in heater from "Wally" (Wal-Mart) whirs on the dash. "Ain't no spongers. No loafers," he says.

-snip-

Nearly a decade after OxyContin slammed into southwestern Virginia and much of Appalachia, the abuse of prescription painkillers in the region is worse than ever, police and public health officials say.

-snip-

A record 248 people died of overdoses in Virginia's western region in 2006, more than those who died from homicides, house fires and alcohol-related car accidents combined. That was an 18 percent increase from 2005 and a 270 percent increase from a decade ago, state medical examiner records show.
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read on, long article


everywhere you look americans are falling apart at the seams

the worst of times

[tridim]

1. Any plans to punish the dealers?

AKA the corporations who manufacture and sell their drugs like crack?

It would be so freaking easy to end the problem of Oxy on the street. Just regulate the sale of the drug. But that would be bad for the bottom line, so it'll never happen.

[flashl]

2. If you consider Perdue's fines as punishment, then yes. n/t

[tridim]

3. Fines aren't punishment for gigantic corporations.

They don't just fine marijuana dealers, and marijuana is nothing compared to Oxycontin.

[flashl]

4. Just a snapshot of the OxyContin Saga

Oxycotin: Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help

In western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse.

Mr. Giuliani, celebrated for his stewardship of New York City after 9/11, soon told the prosecutors they were wrong.

In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him.

A former top federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani participated in two meetings between Purdue officials and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency investigating the company.

...

In the OxyContin case, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters suggest that as a cancer survivor himself, he was driven by a noble goal: to keep the company’s proven pain reliever available to the widest circle of sufferers.

...

To drive OxyContin’s sales, Purdue, beginning in 1996, set in motion what D.E.A. officials described as perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse.

As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead.

...

The crisis that brought Purdue to Mr. Giuliani in 2002 involved OxyContin, a time-released form of the narcotic oxycodone, which had turned into a blockbuster product with annual sales of more than $1 billion.

But along the way, the pain medication had also become a popular drug for abuse. Among the company’s critics were officials at the Drug Enforcement Administration who said OxyContin had been a factor in hundreds of overdose deaths.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28oxycontin.html?hp

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OxyContin's Deception Costs Firm $634M
Current, Former Execs Plead Guilty To Misleading Public About Drug's Risk Of Addiction

Two days after agreeing to pay states nearly $20 million for falsely marketing OxyContin, the drug's maker, Perdue Pharma, and three current and former executives plead guilty to federal charges.

Not only did Perdue receive 'help' from Giuliani's law firm, there are strong suggestions that the DOJ pressured the DA to lessen the executives' charges.

[donsu]

5. kicking so more can read this

nt