CANCER PAIN-KILLER PROVES POPULAR HIGH

PIKEVILLE KY The robber asked for only one thing when he walked into a
pharmacy with a mask over his head and an automatic rifle in his hands:
OxyContin.

The prescription drug, meant to be a pain-killer for cancer patients, is
being abused throughout the East, authorities say.

In Kentucky, about 200 people were arrested and charged last week in what
police say was the largest drug raid in state history. All allegedly had
been using or dealing OxyContin.

"They'll kick a bag of cocaine out of the way to get to 'Oxy,' " detective
Roger Hall of the Harlan County sheriff's department in Kentucky said last
week.

In the past two years, the drug has become popular in parts of Ohio,
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Maine, according to the U.S.
Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

On Thursday, authorities said that at least 28 people in Virginia had died
from overdoses of OxyContin in the last two years, and medical officials
said that number easily would double as coroners examine another 100 deaths.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Famularo, who helped lead the Kentucky bust, said he
has studied autopsy reports and determined that the drug has caused 59
deaths in Kentucky alone.

The company that makes OxyContin disputes Famularo's figures.

"Even one death from abuse is a tragedy. My concern is that numbers
sometimes take on a life of their own in a situation like this," said Dr.
J. David Haddox, senior medical director for health policy at Purdue Pharma
in Stamford, Conn. "I've not seen any data that those numbers are anywhere
close to accurate."

Famularo said people have been crushing the pills into powder and snorting
it, or injecting it to get a euphoric high similar to that of heroin. It
sells on the illegal drug market for up to $100 a pill.

In Tuesday's drug roundup, police charged a nurse with stealing OxyContin
from her hospital, said Capt. Danny Webb of the Kentucky State Police in
Hazard. Webb said another suspect worked in a doctor's office and allegedly
called in prescriptions for OxyContin to pharmacies. Her husband then would
pick up the pills, police said.

In Ohio, two doctors were arrested recently in connection with OxyContin
prescriptions. In Maine last year, 11 people were accused of obtaining
OxyContin by forging prescriptions.

The drug has led to an increase in crime in eastern Kentucky, said Hazard
Police Chief Rod Maggard. He estimated 90 percent of the thefts and
burglaries in Hazard are to get money to buy more pills.

In a detox center in Ashland, about 75 percent of the patients treated in
the last 18 months have used OxyContin, said Bill Stewart, a supervisor for
the regional mental health agency.

Traditionally, Stewart said, drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin arrived
in Kentucky long after they became popular in urban centers such as New
York, Miami or Los Angeles. "But we seem to have caught on real fast to
this drug," he said.

Police say they think people in the region are more likely to abuse
prescription medications because they are more readily available than
illicit drugs and carry less of a social stigma.

The Kentucky bust wasn't the state's first encounter with the drug. Last
May, 10 people were charged with running a drug operation out of a rural
home that police say was almost as busy as a local fast-food restaurant's
drive-through window. OxyContin was among the drugs they allegedly offered
for sale.

Police saw more than 59,000 vehicles pull into the driveway of the rural
home during a five-month period last year. Investigators say as many as 600
were seen in the driveway in one day.

"I'd love to be able to put an end to this problem," said Britt Lewis,
administrator of a medical clinic in Harlan. "There's too many people dying."