ABUSE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ABOUT TO EXCEED THAT OF
STREET NARCOTICS

Trend Has Created Increased Trafficking In Sometimes-Deadly
Counterfeit Medications, UN-Affiliated Agency Says

VIENNA -- Abuse of prescription drugs will soon be higher than the use
of illicit street narcotics worldwide, and the shift has spawned a
lethal new trade -- counterfeit painkillers, sedatives and other
medicines potent enough to kill -- a global watchdog warned Wednesday.

Already, prescription drug abuse has outstripped traditional illegal
drugs such as heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy in parts of Europe, Africa
and South Asia, the UN-affiliated International Narcotics Control
Board said in its annual report for 2006.

In the United States alone, the abuse of painkillers, stimulants,
tranquillizers and other prescription medications has gone beyond
"practically all illicit drugs with the exception of cannabis," with
users increasingly turning to them first, the Vienna-based group said.

And unregulated markets in many countries make it easy for traffickers
to peddle a wide variety of counterfeit drugs through courier
services, ordinary mail and the Internet.

"Gains over the past years in international drug control may be
seriously undermined by this ominous development if it remains
unchecked," INCB president Philip Emafo said.

Discount medications that seem to be authentic often turn out to be
cheap but powerful knockoffs concocted from recipes posted on the web,
Emafo added.

"Instead of healing, they can take lives," he said, characterizing the
danger as "real and sizable."

Up to 50 per cent of all drugs taken in developing countries are
believed to be counterfeit, the board said, citing estimates from the
World Health Organization.

Buprenorphine, an analgesic, is now the main injection drug in most of
India, and it is also trafficked and abused in tablet form in France,
where the INCB estimates 20-25 per cent of the drug sold commercially
as Subutex is being diverted to the black market.

A study published last November in the Canadian Medical Association
Journal found that heroin was no longer the opiate of choice in Canada
- -- prescription narcotics such as morphine and OxyContin were taking
its place.

Researchers studied street users in seven cities across the country in
2005, and found that heroin remained the No. 1 illicit opiate only in
Vancouver and Montreal. In the five other cities -- Edmonton, Toronto,
Quebec City, Fredericton and Saint John, N.B. -- more often than not,
getting high meant grinding up and injecting prescription opioids like
Percodan.

When the study was released, lead author Benedikt Fischer, an
addiction researcher at the University of Victoria, said the switch to
highly addictive prescription narcotics among street users likely
represents just the tip of the iceberg.

If the general population were factored in, he said he suspected the
numbers would be much higher.

The INCB said the number of Americans abusing prescription drugs
nearly doubled from 7.8 million in 1992 to 15.1 million in 2003. Among
their prescription drugs of choice: The painkillers oxycodone, sold
under the trade name OxyContin, and hydrocodone, sold as Vicodin and
used by 7.4 per cent of college students in 2005.

Although the number of U.S. high school and college students abusing
illicit drugs declined in 2006 for a fourth consecutive year, "the
high and increasing level of abuse of prescription drugs by both
adolescents and adults is a serious cause for concern," it said.

Counterfeiters are exploiting intense demand for prescription drugs
that can give a "high" comparable to cocaine, heroin or
methamphetamine, the watchdog group said.