PAINKILLER'S POISONOUS ADDITIVE: GREED

The media have, thanks to efforts by law enforcement, at last come to the
knowledge that abuse of a drug called OxyContin is devastating Appalachia.

It has been 10 years or so since crack cocaine burned through the
African-American community here. I was a prosecutor at the time, and until
now I had never seen anything devastate an entire culture the way crack
destroyed the black community in the mountains. It destroyed marriages,
orphaned children and debauched much of the law enforcement establishment.

But bad as crack was and as terrible as its consequences were, law
enforcement officials had one advantage that they will never have with
``Oxies.'' Cocaine, from the minute it is extracted in Peru, is illegal. It
is contraband from its inception. OxyContin is not. It is perfectly legal.

Some of it originates not in the Andes of Peru, but in Ohio, and the price
on the street is $1 a milligram. Yes, you read that right. A 20-milligram
OxyContin that costs a dollar or two from the druggist costs $20 on the
street. That is not confined to the housing projects, Mom and Dad. The
pills are on every street.

It's the lure of easy money, says the song Smuggler's Blues. Where else can
a guy with a bad back or a crooked doctor make $2,000 for a few pills?
Nowhere, man. Any doctor or druggist with a Drug Enforcement Agency
narcotics number has access to a fortune. Some of them will be unable to
resist the temptation to turn such huge profits. Sex will be easy to get if
the object of your advances needs an Oxy.

There is no end to the ugliness of this thing, as I learned watching a
brilliant young friend lose a fabulous business career by snorting Oxies.
No matter what, she couldn't quit. She got started at a party, or so her
family thinks. That was two years ago; I think the pills are going to kill
her, and there is nothing even her family can do. She lies to them and to
herself about where the money goes.

In the meantime, law enforcement is just looking at the tip of the iceberg.
But unlike the cocaine epidemic that began as illegal, this one was born in
the medical community, visited on us by the Brotherhood of Healing.

It will only be stopped when the physicians heal themselves.