PROBLEMS WITH ABUSE OF PAIN DRUG OXYCONTIN CREEP INTO KC

The young man with the hollow eyes wanted OxyContin. He didn't have a
prescription. But he did have a gun.

When he robbed an Overland Park pharmacy last week, the crime was one of
the first Kansas City area incidents of a drug problem that has inundated
parts of the country, causing overdose deaths and creating a spike in
crimes including robbery and fraudulent prescriptions.

But for millions of cancer patients and pain sufferers, OxyContin is a
breakthrough painkiller that provides long periods of relief without
drowsiness.

"Without this, I would be consigned to bed," said Mary Jo Mayer, 42, a
Kansas City manicurist who has severe muscle and joint pain. "I've had my
life handed back to me. It takes the pain away, and I'm clear-headed.
Before, it hurt to sit down, to drive and to work."

Doctors say hundreds of people in the Kansas City area have seen good
results from OxyContin, the time-release form of oxycodone, a synthetic
drug similar to morphine.

But now its abuse is starting to creep into the area.

Some authorities aren't familiar with the drug. Others said they have been
seeing isolated cases.

"It's out here," said Roger Yates, Clay County undersheriff. "We have had
some show up on the streets. It's not out there in large amounts like meth,
but it's one to watch for."

When taken improperly, it can kill.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has counted more than 500 overdose
deaths involving OxyContin, said Shirley Armstead, spokeswoman for the
agency's regional office in St. Louis.

The drug's maker, Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn., acknowledges that
OxyContin has played a role in deaths, but says it was not the sole cause.

"Overdose problems have occurred when OxyContin has been used
inappropriately and in combination with multiple drugs or alcohol," said
James Heins, spokesman for Purdue Pharma.

DEA officials asked Purdue Pharma earlier this year to limit its
distribution and marketing of OxyContin. The request was part of a
"national action plan," the DEA's first for a prescription medication.

Purdue Pharma is offering drug prevention and education programs and free
tamper-resistant prescription pads for physicians. It also is working on an
abuse-resistant form of OxyContin that should be available in two or three
years, Heins said.

Purdue Pharma also recently announced that it was suspending shipments of
its most potent form of OxyContin, 160-milligram tablets.

Despite the moves, the company continues to face challenges:

a.. West Virginia's attorney general filed a lawsuit last month accusing
Purdue Pharma of aggressively marketing the painkiller while downplaying
its risks.

a.. Seven persons in Virginia who say they are former addicts or relatives
of addicts recently filed a lawsuit seeking $5.2 billion in compensatory
damages from the company. The company has stated that both lawsuits are
baseless.

a.. Lawmakers in Florida, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia
have put restrictions on OxyContin's distribution to Medicaid recipients in
an effort to curb drug abusers, who crush the time-release tablets and
either snort or inject them, so that the effect of the dose hits all at
once. "It's a dangerous drug," Armstead said. "When it's used improperly,
it will slow blood pressure and the heart rate too much."

Armstead spoke to Missouri Drug Abuse Resistance Education officers last
week in Columbia to educate them about OxyContin abuse.

Recently in the St. Louis area, a woman died from overdosing on the drug,
Armstead said. It had been prescribed for a relative she was caring for.

Also, two medical professionals in the St. Louis area have been arrested
for misusing prescriptions for OxyContin.

Few incidents have been reported in the Kansas City area or in Kansas,
Armstead said. Area hospital emergency rooms have treated only a few people
who misused OxyContin.

Purdue Pharma and other OxyContin supporters say the drug is being unfairly
tarred because some people abuse it.

"All the focus on abuse in the media has sensationalized it, and that's not
good because it's scared doctors from prescribing it and patients from
using it when it is beneficial," company spokesman Heins said.

Robert Twillman, director of psychosocial services at the University of
Kansas Cancer Center, sees it as a wonder drug.

"Because of its sustained release, it allows people to sleep through the
night and not take something every few hours," Twillman said. "Pain is
horrendously undertreated."

Nearly 50 million people in the United States are partly or totally
disabled by pain, according to a pain assessment manual from the federal
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Medical
professionals expect the number to grow as baby boomers age.

Sharon Prohaska, a Kansas City doctor who specializes in internal medicine,
said pain interferes significantly with movement, sleep, eating,
concentration and social interactions, causing anxiety and distress. She
said she has had patients in such pain they have been suicidal.

Prohaska said OxyContin is one of the best painkillers available. A
fentanyl patch can produce similar relief but can cause nausea and skin
irritation, she said.

"To get rid of OxyContin would be like getting rid of planes if 120 drug
addicts decided to crash one," Prohaska said. "Is it our purpose to make it
safer for the drug addicts or general society?"

Like other doctors, Prohaska urges her patients to keep OxyContin and other
heavy painkillers in safes.

But, it seems, there's no keeping the drug out of the hands of those who
would misuse it.

James Pack, undersheriff of West Virginia's Mingo County, has seen people
become hooked on OxyContin. They burglarize homes, rob stores and become
prostitutes, he said. Some even intentionally injure themselves to get a
prescription.

"They're the knuckleheads, but they're bad people who come from good,
upstanding families," Pack said. "It's the worst drug that's abused here.
It's like LSD or heroin in the 1960s."

OxyContin has become popular in Appalachia, where industries such as coal
mining can produce serious injuries and the need for strong painkillers.
Some people started selling their prescriptions of OxyContin for 50 cents
to $1 per milligram, or $20 to $40 for a 40-milligram tablet.

That's five to 10 times the cost of the same tablet at a pharmacy -- a
quick profit of as much as 900 percent.

Some police departments have reported that oxycodone products such as
OxyContin have made their way to the party scene. But Armstead of the DEA
said that in the Midwest, illicit use of OxyContin has primarily been by
meth users coming off their jittery high.

"The problem isn't severe here," Armstead said. "And we want to prevent it
from becoming so."