FIGHTING DRUG ABUSE ISN'T AS SIMPLE AS POPPING A NEW PILL

Efforts to develop an OxyContin alternative offer hope. But even that won't
inoculate communities against drug abuse.

PURDUE PHARMA'S announcement Wednesday of a new, abuse-resistant drug that
might be a substitute for the powerful opioid OxyContin is more than welcome.

Southwest Virginia, ravaged by death and crimes connected to the
pain-killer's misuse, can expect some relief - in, perhaps, three years. If
the new formula proves successful in clinical studies and it gets the
approval of the Food and Drug Administration.

The drug maker's critics, notably Connecticut Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal, are right to complain that the problems associated with
OxyContin addiction demand more immediate action.

Virginia's poor, rural areas need help - from the state? from the company?
perhaps a public-private partnership? - to provide drug education,
counseling and long-term treatment, all in short supply.

The hot spots for OxyContin abuse, thus far, have been places like
Southwest Virginia. There, dangerous and arduous jobs such as mining coal
create a legitimate market for heavy-duty pain relief: the supply.
Isolation creates a dearth of illicit alternatives for people just looking
to get high: the demand.

Drug abusers who, in cities, might turn to heroin or cocaine find, instead,
abundant sources for a legal, time-released pain pill that, when crushed,
produces a heroin-like euphoria. Or death.

The perplexing reality about the abuse of OxyContin or any other drug is
that choice: to risk death, the welfare of one's family, the safety of
one's community, for a temporary high.

Purdue Pharma can be applauded for the millions of dollars it has invested
in searching for an abuse-proof OxyContin substitute. It can be criticized
for aggressively marketing such a potent pain-killer that is so easily abused.

A company that has reaped such handsome profits on a product should plow
some money - as Purdue Pharma, to its credit, is doing - into counteracting
its unintended side effects when they prove so devastating.

But Purdue Pharma cannot be blamed for the underlying social pathologies
that create fertile ground for drug abuse. Rural, urban, suburban
communities - none is immune. All need education for prevention and options
for treatment. More, they need to identify the poverty, both material and
spiritual, that makes drug abuse a choice, and work to eliminate it.

There is no pill for that.