LEGITIMATE PATIENTS FEAR DRUG MIGHT BE RECALLED

DEA Believes More Should Be Done To Curb Abuse Of The Painkiller

Some are concerned that news coverage actually is contributing to the
problem by alerting potential drug users about a new high to seek.

The 13 steps that lead to Gary Kennedy's second-story bedroom would be
murder without the little beige pills he takes twice a day.

"Without OxyContin, I would be in a nursing home," he said.

Kennedy, a 54-year-old retired Army sergeant major with a bad back and
hip, says the controversy over fatal overdoses and crime associated with
OxyContin abuse have made doctors reluctant to prescribe the drug to
legitimate patients like himself.

Although he needs the drug to live a normal life in his Norton home,
Kennedy says he must drive 100 miles round-trip to Kingsport, Tenn.,
just to find a doctor willing to dispense the powerful painkiller.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is asking the company that makes
OxyContin to consider cutting back on the way it markets and distributes
the drug. And a Lee County group has launched a petition drive calling
for a recall.

If that happens, Kennedy said, he would be tempted to buy OxyContin
illegally.

"If I take no medication, it is a constant, killer pain," he said. "It
hurts you so bad you want to roll in the floor."

Rogene Waite, a spokeswoman for the DEA, said the agency does not
support a total recall of OxyContin, even though it believes more should
be done to curb abuse of the drug.

Purdue Pharma, which sold more than $1 billion worth of OxyContin last
year, says that tens of thousands of people like Kennedy are being made
to suffer needlessly. The company says that fear about what criminals do
with its drug is overriding sound medical practice.

"That's just wrong," company spokesman James Heins said.

The company - which has announced a plan of action to fight OxyContin
abuse while pledging to keep providing it to the public - has complained
that inaccurate and often exaggerated media accounts are part of the
problem.

In recent months, the story has played out everywhere from community
newspapers to the cover of Newsweek. The number of fatal overdoses
attributed to OxyContin - reported to be more than 200 nationwide - is
one thing Purdue Pharma takes issue with.

Blood tests taken during autopsies can determine only if a death was
caused by oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin and other drugs.
Because OxyContin accounts for just 25 percent of the prescriptions
written for oxycodone-based medicines, Purdue Pharma says, it's
inaccurate to blame it for all the overdoses.

But Dr. William Massello of the Medical Examiner's office in Roanoke
said additional evidence collected by authorities suggests that
OxyContin was involved in many of the 37 oxycodone-related overdoses in
far Southwest Virginia since 1998.

In addition, Massello's office reports there were no fatal oxycodone
overdoses in far Southwest Virginia in the six years before 1995, the
year OxyContin was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Still, many people who depend on OxyContin say it is getting a bad rap.

Loretta Johnson, a 66-year-old Tazewell County resident, said she used
the drug in 1999 with good results after she broke her back in a car
accident.

"I realize it's a dreadful problem and that people have died and are
dying because of it," she said. "But the drug is not the problem. It's
just like guns. The gun is not to blame, it's the use of it."

Johnson said she is concerned that news coverage actually is
contributing to the problem by alerting potential drug users about a new
high to seek.

"You can't ignore word of mouth," said Waite of the DEA. "There's a buzz
about it, and that's attractive to abusers."