POLICE WAGING WAR ON THE HEROIN ALTERNATIVE

Newfoundland Used Sting To Get Oxycontin Off The Street

HALIFAX - She became a kind of Newfoundland Mata Hari and was
instrumental, police say, in curbing a lethal prescription-drug abuse
problem.

When police in St. John's launched a multi-million-dollar
investigation into the province's OxyContin epidemic, they decided an
undercover operation was called for and came up with some very
specific requirements for the law-enforcement mole.

The detective would need to be young, attractive, thin -- and female,
the officers who headed the investigation said recently in their first
public airing of the colourful story behind the case.

Not only did the undercover operative have to blend in with the real,
emaciated addicts, but she was to act as bait for the chief target of
the investigation: a doctor accused of diverting huge amounts of the
powerful prescription painkiller to addicts. The payment he often
demanded, allegedly, was oral sex from from pretty girls.

"Our intelligence indicated that this doctor liked women and wanted to
surround himself with pretty girls," said Platoon Commander Jim
Carroll of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary at a conference last
week of the Canadian Health-care Anti-fraud Association.

"If this was going to work and if we were going to get some
co-operative evidence, we needed the doctor to be attracted to this
individual."

An RCMP undercover operative was brought in from another jurisdiction
and gathered evidence that police used to lay 46 charges against a
physician, including trading pills for sex. Several alleged street
traffickers were also arrested in the May, 2005, sweep, and most have
since been convicted.

Dr. Sean Buckingham is still awaiting trial, and the charges have yet
to be proved in court. But the intriguing saga behind his arrest
illustrates the lengths to which police will go in combating the
growing problem of prescription-drug abuse, most notably involving
OxyContin.

The opioid is a potent painkiller recommended chiefly for patients
with chronic, severe pain, especially those suffering from cancer,
with the key advantage that it disperses medication in time-release
fashion over 12 hours.

But as a more trustworthy, though equally dangerous, alternative to
heroin, it became popular on the street in the United States, later
flooded Newfoundland as a street drug, then ravaged Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick. Now the pills are finding their way on to the streets
of other provinces, often, allegedly, with the help of a small
minority of unscrupulous doctors.

Last month, the Ontario Provincial Police charged John Kitakufe, a
Richmond Hill doctor, with fraud and trafficking offences in
connection with an alleged scheme to supply OxyContin pills to the
black market. Six other people were also arrested.

The drug seems to have largely replaced Percodan and Percocet among
prescription drug abusers in Ontario, said Detective Sergeant Scott
Moore of the OPP.

"It's become very much a drug of choice," he said.

Newfoundland police and RCMP in the province launched their probe,
called Operation Remedy, in January, 2003, amid mounting evidence of
OxyContin's toll in the province.

By then, the local coroners had identified 11 deaths resulting from
overdosing on the pills, out of a St. John's-area population of
220,000, while drug treatment facilities saw their caseload soar.
Prescriptions jumped 600% in Newfoundland between 2000 and 2003.

For Terry Moore, the RCMP undercover co-ordinator called in to help
the Newfoundland Constabulary, it was about more than just the grim
statistics, though. Many of those hooked on OxyContin were otherwise
stable middle-class kids, including the teenage daughter of family
friends.

"It was personal," he said. "You see a brilliant, attractive little
kid swallowed up by this and encouraged to continue. That was hard."

The investigation focused on a doctor believed to be routinely
prescribing OxyContin to addicts. Police observed long line-ups,
including some of the city's most unsavoury characters, when his
office first opened in the morning. There were fights inside the
clinic and people shooting up in its washrooms.

After finding an appropriate undercover officer for the mission, the
police task force assigned a male officer to act as her boyfriend as
she moved into a divey apartment near the doctor's office.

As per the plan, she befriended one of the doctor's regular customers,
who got her in the door without raising suspicion.

The evidence she collected cannot be revealed until the trial, but was
"amazing," said Sgt. Scott. She also convinced her addict "friend,"
who never learned her true identity, to enter a detox program.

Since the arrests, OxyContin is less available on the streets of St.
John's, and there have been no overdose deaths, the officers said.

Purdue Pharma, the drug's manufacturer, says it is concerned with the
spreading black market diversion of its product and is taking steps to
stamp it out.

The company works with police and health professionals to raise
awareness and knowledge of OxyContin, said Randy Steffan, a spokesman
for the firm's Canadian office.

"We have to get the message out that any prescription drug abuse is
wrong and very dangerous," he said.