Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum « Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

June 10, 2009

Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, heroin addiction, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:19 pm

Massachusetts State Senator Steven Tolman calls the OxyContin / heroin problem in his state a deadly epidemic.

In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe recently, Steven A. Tolman, Democratic senator from Brighton, Mass., called the OxyContin and heroin addiction problem in his state “the deadly epidemic no one’s addressing”.

Sen. Tolman describes the widespread horror caused by OxyContin and heroin — essentially interchangeable drugs — and how the lack of available treatment is causing devastation.

“Recently, the OxyContin and Heroin Commission, established during the 2007-2008 legislative session, held the second in a series of public hearings throughout the state,” Tolman writes. “The commission’s purpose is to investigate the levels of addiction to OxyContin and heroin, study the laws regarding treatment, gauge the epidemic’s cost on state services, and offer solutions.

“We’ve heard from parents who have emptied bank accounts or remortgaged homes paying for private treatment because insurance won’t cover long-term care. Families have described reviving their dying children with Narcan [ed.: a brand of naloxone, a drug used to counter the effects of opioid overdose] or having them arrested for felony drug charges to get them off the streets. Otherwise good people appear in our courtrooms, end up in jail or the ER, or spend a lifetime on harm-reduction medication because there is no clear path to recovery,” he added.

Tolman’s experience in Massachusetts is mirrored in almost every state in the Union. The facts are, of course, that OxyContin is molecularly almost identical to illegal heroin, is just as addictive as heroin, is metabolized in the body into morphine (another illegal drug), and has become in many parts of the country the main gateway drug to heroin, and even preferred by long-time heroin addicts to heroin itself.

Back in February, at a public meeting called by the FDA’s Opioid Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS), Novus Detox’s medical director Steve Hayes asked the panel the same question he had been asked by a Novus patient coming off OxyContin:

“If heroin is illegal, why is OxyContin legal?”

No one on the FDA panel had an answer.

If you don’t have an answer either, you should take yourself right now to Ban OxyContin and sign the petition. More than 2,600 others have already done so.

And if you’re in doubt about signing the petition, read through some of the hundreds of comments left by petitioners telling stories of devastation and death at the hands of OxyContin.

Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

June 10, 2009

Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum

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