OXYCONTIN MAKER HIRES HELP FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

The Connecticut company that makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin plans
to hire law-enforcement officials from around the nation to work with
police grappling with the widespread abuse of the drug, company officials
said yesterday.

Some immediately derided the move as an attempt by Purdue Pharma L.P. to
put its public critics on its private payroll. Others called it an effort
to burnish the company's image in the wake of fatal overdoses and crime
linked to OxyContin abuse.

"I think it's more of a public relations thing than anything else," said
Dennis Lee, prosecutor in Tazewell County, the epicenter of the "Oxy" abuse
problem that has gripped Southwest Virginia since 1998.

But Dr. J. David Haddox, senior medical director at Purdue, said critics
are wrong: The company hopes to hire a total of seven law-enforcement
officers with expertise in drug abuse by the end of next year in an attempt
to better understand how abusers are getting a drug that legitimate pain
sufferers hail as their salvation.

"We want to be able to collect information and experiences from police
officers from around the nation," said Haddox.

In Virginia, Purdue already has hired Landon Gibbs, head of the Virginia
State Police drug diversion unit in Roanoke. Gibbs starts his job with
Purdue on Tuesday.

Haddox said Gibbs is the first hire of what will be a law-enforcement
liaison and education team that should include another six police officers
by the end of next year. "It may turn out that we need more, but six is
what we're going to go for right now."

The team will report to Haddox, who also heads the company's public
relations team, which has spent the last year emphasizing that the medical
benefits of the powerful opioid OxyContin dwarf the problems associated
with its illicit use.

OxyContin, introduced five years ago, was designed to ease moderate to
severe chronic pain, such as that suffered by patients with terminal
cancer. But abusers have found they can circumvent the pill's 12-hour time
release by crushing it and snorting it, or by injecting it. Once addicted,
abusers have turned to crime to acquire the drug, straining the limited
resources of law-enforcement agencies in areas such as Southwest Virginia
and rural Maine.

Abuse of the drug has prompted calls for more regulation, tougher prison
sentences and new ways to track prescriptions. In the wake of the
publicity, Purdue has developed a tamper-proof prescription pad, stopped
distributing its most powerful OxyContin pill of 160 mg, curtailed
shipments to Mexico and instructed its representatives not to sell the drug
to pharmacists they think won't act responsibly.

James Heins, spokesman for Purdue, said Haddox's team will not only give
the company more insight into how abusers obtain the drug, but will also
help the company explain the drug's widespread benefit to law-enforcement
agencies.

"That's part of our whole initiative," he said, "to work with
law-enforcement to make sure they see pain management from our point of
view, and we see drug diversion from their point of view."

Emmitt Yeary, an Abingdon lawyer who has filed a $5.2 billion class-action
lawsuit against Purdue Pharma in federal court in Big Stone Gap, called the
company's use of law-enforcement officials "a disgrace."

"It's a public relations ploy, and I think it's another hypocritical
gesture of denial on their part that aggravates the situation. They're
continuing to say the problem is the abusers, when they created this demon
drug and they've created the victims," said Yeary, who filed the suit on
behalf of eight Virginia residents who say they've suffered as a result of
OxyContin addiction.

But Gibbs, of the Virginia State Police, said he would not have accepted
the job with Purdue unless he was convinced the company is trying to do the
right thing.

"We discussed this, and this is not going to be anything but a real program
to help law enforcement prevent diversion," he said.

Gibbs is the second high-profile enforcement official to join Purdue. Jay
McCloskey, former U.S. attorney for Maine, was one of the first to
recognize his state had a problem with Oxy abuse, and he became an
outspoken critic. Now, though, he works as a part-time consultant for the
company, Haddox said.