Pill Mill Monitor : Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Kay Van Wey Law Firm : Prescription Drug Overdoses & Pharmaceutical Abuse

Pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and three other companies have announced a new prescription drug that will contain pure hydrocodone, a highly addictive narcotic painkiller.  The pill is expected to be 10 times stronger than Vicodin, one of the strongest painkillers available on the market.

Hydrocodone is an opiate much like heroin, oxycodone, codeine, and morphine.  The United States is the largest consumer of hydrocodone prescription pills, using 99 percent of what is on the world market.  Much of the hydrocodone available today is combined with other painkillers like acetaminophen.

Over the years, these pain pills have been criticized for being too addictive.  For example, OxyContin, produced by Purdue Pharma, is the most abused pain pill in the United States. When OxyContin was first introduced onto the market in 1995, abusers quickly learned that they could get a stronger high from the time-release caplets by crushing them.

Today, prescriptions that contain hydrocodone are a quick second to oxycodone in terms of abuse.  A stronger painkiller that contains pure hydrocodone could be disastrous for a nation already suffering with substance abuse and addiction.

The market for pain pills is $10 billion, and pharmaceutical companies are coming up with new drugs to get into the lucrative market. But big pharmaceutical companies are marketing the new drugs as safer, arguing that fewer patients will experience liver problems like they do with drugs that contain acetaminophen.

A form of pure hydrocodone could be on the market as early as 2013, but with an even more addictive prescription on the market, more patients may become addicted to the drugs, leading to numerous overdoses that will strain hospitals resources.  Abuse of hydrocodone alone has led to an uptick in the number of emergency room visits related to hydrocodone abuse.  In 2000, more than 19,000 visits to the emergency room were related to hydrocodone abuse, but in 2008 that number grew more than four times to more than 86,000 visits.

Prescription drug addiction is a brain disease that can be fatal if undetected or untreated. To learn more about America’s prescription drug addiction epidemic, visit www.vanweylaw.com.

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(Image: markuso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Prescription drug abuse is on the rise in seniors and the disabled who rely on Medicare Part D to get their prescriptions. A report issued by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carpenter, along with senior Republican Scott Brown, found that nearly 170,000 people enrolled in the program went “doctor shopping” for powerful pain killers like oxycodone and hydrocodone.

In terms of prescription drug abuse, “doctor shopping” is where patients go to different doctors to get multiple prescriptions. The report found that some patients had gone to at least five doctors for prescriptions of drugs that are often abused. In all, these patients accounted for 1.8 percent of the total number of patients enrolled in the program.

Senator Scott Brown called the program “taxpayer-funded drug dealing,” and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for more strict control of the program to prevent Medicare fraud.

Why Older Patients are more at Risk

Today, older patients are being prescribed more long-term prescriptions and as many as 30 pills a day, which can lead to unintentional misuse of prescription drugs. For many seniors, the difficulty lies in simply being able to keep track of the pills and dosages they are taking.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Americans ages 65 and older account for 13 percent of the population, but are prescribed one-third of all medicines prescribed in the United States. Combine their multiple prescriptions with over-the-counter medicines and dietary supplements, and the risk that they will have negative drug interactions soars.

Additionally, some seniors take medications that are not medically necessary or use medications for conditions that the medications were not originally prescribed. Seniors also tend to self-medicate for depression.

Benzodiazepines like Valium and Xanax are especially dangerous for seniors because they are more likely to feel stronger effects from the drugs than are younger people. These drugs can lead to falls and motor vehicle accidents for seniors, which can cause dangerous hip and thigh fractures.

Despite the risks these medicines pose, the government is expected to expand Medicare’s $62 billion drug program to cover benzodiazepines and other sedatives, both of which are commonly abused drugs.

To learn more about prescription drug abuse in the United States, read my article entitled “America’s Growing Addiction,” available at www.vanweylaw.com.

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We hear the reports on the news all the time about military service personnel who have survived bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who have also lost limbs or have been seriously injured. They remind us of the great sacrifice they are making to protect our freedom. But the news media do not tell us about the stories of service personnel who were injured and have subsequently become addicted to prescription pain killers.

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I recently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There, you will find the Sackler Wing which contains treasures from the age of the Egyptian pharaohs. You will also find Arthur M. Sackler galleries at the Smithsonian Institute ,Harvard and Beijing University. Many people do not know the Sackler name apart from their association with these lofty cultural institutions.

Arthur M. Sackler has been referred to as a marketing genius and the godfather of the modern-day drug advertising industry.  He developed  drug marketing techniques such as: direct to consumer advertising , sponsoring luxurious all expense paid medical education courses for doctors, glamorizing drugs as a quick fixes, and  paying for "scientific" studies backing the need for and/or efficacy of the particular drug being studied.

Arthur Sackler, who was already rich, made a fortune marketing and selling Librium and Valium. Later, younger brothers Mortimer and Raymond  joined Arthur in acquiring a little known drug company called the Purdue Frederick Company. Arthur died in 1987 at the age of 73.  In 1996 the family owned company, now known as Purdue Pharma introduced it's new blockbuster drug, Oxycontin.

Oxycontin is a very powerful, long acting narcotic which is should only be prescribed for  serious pain. Purdue Pharma  recognized even before the drug was marketed that they would face stiff resistance from doctors who were concerned about the potential for  OxyContin to be abused by patients or cause addiction.

Taking a chapter from brother Arthur's drug marketing playbook, Mortimer and Raymond embarked on the most aggressive marketing campaign ever undertaken by a pharmaceutical company for a narcotic painkiller. Purdue Pharma marketed  OxyContin to doctors like general practitioners, who often had little training in the treatment of serious pain or in recognizing signs of drug abuse in patients. One of their techniques was to fly physicians in to conferences about the "inadequate treatment of pain" and the need for doctors to aggressively prescribe narcotics like Oxycontin to their patients.

Just a few years after the drug’s introduction in 1996, annual sales reached $1 billion.

 In reality, Oxycontin proved to be a powerfully addictive drug. Some users  including teenagers, soon discovered that chewing an OxyContin pill or crushing one and then snorting the powder or injecting it with a needle produced a high as powerful as heroin. By 2000, parts of the United States, particularly rural areas, began to see skyrocketing rates of addiction and crime related to use of the drug. The drug came to be known among certain circles as "hillbilly heroin"

 A  comprehensive review of the problem appeared in the journal Pain Physician http://www.painphysicianjournal.com/2006/october/2006;9;287-321.pdf

CDC and DEA data included in the review suggested that from 1997-2004 there was a:

> 556% increase in the sales of oxycodone;

> 500% increase in therapeutic grams of oxycodone used,

> 568% increase in the non-medical use of OxyContin (especially among young people)

 > 129% increase in opioid-related deaths [without heroin or cocaine]:

Using this data, the author extrapolated that the number of deaths from Oxycontin could surpass the deaths from 911 and the Iraq war combined!

 By 2007 the government caught up with Purdue which resulted in  three current and former executives pleaded guilty  to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused. Purdue paid over $600 million in criminal and civil penalties.

From left, Howard R. Udell, the top lawyer for Purdue Pharma; Dr. Paul D. Goldenheim, the company’s former medical director; and Michael Friedman, Purdue’s president.

The last chapter of the Oxycontin saga has not been written. Despite their assertions to the contrary, Purdue Pharma has not cleaned up their act. Read between the lines on Partners Against Pain and you'll see some of Arthur's old tricks still being used.

There is much more to be written about Purdue Pharma and their dirty and deadly deeds. However, I was just so struck by seeing the Sackler name associated with such a venerable institution as the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I thought you should know what this family did to deserve having a wing of a famous art museum named after them.

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