POWERFUL PAINKILLER POPS UP ON THE STREETS

A South Jersey case has drawn local attention to the "immensely popular"
OxyContin.

A five-year-old pill prescribed for cancer patients and others with severe,
chronic pain is appearing on the streets as a new narcotic of choice.

When chewed, snorted or injected, OxyContin produces a rush like heroin -
and an addiction that can be just as hard to break.

Although drug agencies do not have a definitive database of
OxyContin-related crime and abuse, an anecdotal map compiled by the
National Drug Intelligence Center in Washington shows hundreds of incidents
of overdose, armed robbery, prescription fraud and theft in recent months
in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

Local awareness of OxyContin - known on the street as "oxys" or "OCs" - was
sparked this month by the arrest of eight Gloucester County residents on
charges that they submitted fraudulent claims and bilked health-care
programs for thousands of dollars in OxyContin prescriptions.

The suspects are mostly young, white men from predominantly
upper-middle-class Washington Township, police said. Police are still
investigating what the suspects did with the OxyContin.

"I think it has made an incredible penetration in the drug market," said
Gloucester County Prosecutor Andrew Yurick.

James Murphy, deputy chief of the Washington Township police, said
OxyContin "has become immensely popular, rivaling that of heroin and ecstasy."

So far, OxyContin is less available on the street than heroin, cocaine,
ecstasy and LSD, law enforcement officials said. A 10- to 20-milligram bag
of heroin sells for $10 to $25; the pill sells for 50 cents to $1 per
milligram on the street, five to 10 times the retail cost.

The portrait of a typical OxyContin abuser, counselors and police said, is
an employed white man or woman, 18 to 45 years old, from a variety of
social backgrounds.

"People have to get over the impression that the people who are drug users
are the poor," Yurick said. "Many of the affluent communities have the
highest number of drug-addicted people."

The drug, used in large enough quantity, can be deadly because it sends a
signal to the brain to lose consciousness and decrease breathing, said
Anthony Morocco, a toxicologist and emergency-room physician at Hahnemann
University Hospital. The abuser may then stop breathing, he said.

Philadelphia Police Inspector Jerry Daley, who works in the department's
narcotics division, said police had made a few arrests in recent months of
people buying and selling OxyContin, primarily in the Port Richmond,
Fishtown and lower North Philadelphia areas.

"We hear it is an up-and-coming drug of abuse, particularly among those who
have a history of heroin abuse and opiate product abuse," he said.

Police in Lower Bucks County said OxyContin thefts from pharmacies and
trafficking in the drug had become noticeable in the last year.

In the Philadelphia region, the number of people seeking treatment for
addiction to the pill has risen steadily in the last year or so,
substance-abuse counselors said.

Officials from Purdue Pharma LP, the Stamford, Conn., company that
manufactures the pill, said addiction was rare when the drug is taken as
prescribed.

A time-release element stretches out the pill's pain-killing properties for
12 hours. OxyContin delivers the narcotic oxycodone - which, like heroin,
is a derivative of opium - in color-coded tablets containing five
strengths, from 10 to 160 milligrams.

The pill can be chewed, crushed and snorted, or even liquefied and injected
to unleash the full effect of the oxycodone.

"That's abuse, and that's dangerous," said James Heins, a spokesman for
Purdue Pharma. But "it's a product that's helped millions of patients
regain a productive quality of life."

The pill is Purdue Pharma's biggest seller, but officials at the company -
which had $275 million in sales in its last fiscal year - would not
disclose the quantity of OxyContin sold.

The pill, said Michael H. Levy, director of the pain-management center at
the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, is one of the best long-term
painkillers available to physicians and has helped revolutionize pain
treatment.

If taken correctly, OxyContin is a stable medicine with few side effects,
and it does not carry the same negative reputation for addiction as
morphine, which OxyContin has largely replaced, Levy said.

"In a twisted way, it's almost a testimonial to how good it is for real
patients that addicts have found out how to abuse it," he said.

Oxycodone has been used in such painkillers as Tylox, Percodan and Percocet
since the early 1960s, when it was federally approved for use, according to
the Drug Enforcement Administration. OxyContin, however, contains a much
higher concentration of oxycodone.

"I think [the abuse] is relatively new enough that people are getting
blindsided by it," said Carol Janer, a mental-health-program supervisor at
Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-University Medical Center/Cherry Hill.

The pills are also trickling into South Jersey schools, said Janer, who
reported that students ordered to undergo drug tests at Kennedy were
increasingly acknowledging OxyContin use.

Although Philadelphia-area hospitals and police reported few recent
overdoses from OxyContin, several treatment centers reported more OxyContin
addicts seeking help this year than ever before.

About a year before a new drug becomes a problem on the street, said Earl
Fielder, a DEA spokesman, addicts often turn up in the treatment centers.

Alan Stevens, a social worker for the Healthcare Options Center for Alcohol
and Substance Abuse Treatment in Willow Grove, Montgomery County, said the
number of people seeking treatment for OxyContin in the last year or two
had outpaced nearly every other drug except heroin, and was on a par with
crack and cocaine.

One former heroin addict told a counselor at the Maryville Alcohol and Drug
Treatment Center in Monroe Township, Gloucester County, that he had used
OxyContin to wean himself off his heroin habit.

He lied to a doctor to get his first OxyContin prescription, and then found
the pills readily available on the streets of Washington Township, where he
lives.

Bill, a 36-year-old air-conditioning and heating mechanic who lives alone
in Somerdale, Camden County, is another former heroin addict who abused
OxyContin.

Bill, who asked that his last name not be used, said he had first tried
OxyContin during the summer.

A doctor at a pain clinic in South Jersey gave him a prescription to treat
a work-related injury that left him with chronic pain in his shoulder, arm
and back.

Seven months later, Bill began to abuse it, consuming 320 milligrams each
day, twice his prescribed amount.

Chewing a pill, he said, "was just like doing a big old shot of heroin
without sticking a needle in your arm." And when he sought help, Bill said,
trying to break the drug's bond was "100 times worse than heroin."

Marc Levy's e-mail address is mlevy@phillynews.com.

Contributing to this article were Inquirer staff writer Thomas J. Gibbons
Jr. and Vicki McClure, Margie Fishman, Mark Stroh, Kate Herman and Lee
Drutman of the Inquirer suburban staff.