'HILLBILLY HEROIN' USE SOARS IN CANADA

Doctors prescribing opiate-based drugs at rapidly growing rate

WINDSOR -- In thousands of Canadian medicine cabinets, there's a junkie
waiting to happen.

Doctors are prescribing opiate-based painkillers -- offering a high the
rival of heroin -- at a rapidly growing rate, despite inadequate safeguards
against addiction, say police and substance abuse counsellors.

Prescriptions for OxyContin, the purest form of the opiate oxycodone,
increased five-fold between 2000 and 2003, and in Ontario alone, according
to the private health-information company IMS Health, sales increased 600
per cent in the four-year period ending in May.

With women particularly at risk, drugs containing oxycodone are being abused
so widely that Canada's chief coroners are preparing to issue a national
alert this fall. The drug is responsible for at least 250 overdose deaths in
Ontario since 1998 and hundreds more nationwide, the coroners say.

Because there is no central tracking system in the nation's pharmacies,
abusers can stockpile "oxy" or "hillbilly heroin" by hopping from doctors'
offices to clinics and hospital emergency rooms, duping physicians into
writing prescriptions and having them filled at an assortment of drug stores
without detection.

"In the end I didn't care," said Penny Quinlan, a Windsor-area woman who
pleaded guilty to a massive double-doctoring scheme in which 15 physicians
prescribed her more than 3,000 oxy pills. "No one doing it cares because you
have to have the drug. When you know that all you have to do is go into a
doctor's office, of course you'll do it.

"They ask if you've been to another doctor but of course any junkie will
lie, and most doctors never call other doctors to verify."

Produced by the Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue Pharma LP, OxyContin hit the
Canadian market in 1997. According to IMS, Canadian pharmacies dispensed
close to 2.8 million prescriptions of all products containing oxycodone in
the 12 months ending in May, up from just under 1.4 million in 2000.

OxyContin was hailed as a godsend for cancer patients and others suffering
long-term chronic pain, thanks to its 12-hour release mechanism, which
significantly reduced dosages.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has accused Purdue of "overly aggressive"
marketing of OxyContin, and the company faces about 300 lawsuits alleging
improper promotion of the drug.

Only British Columbia and Alberta have their pharmacies connected on a
centralized drug-monitoring system to help pharmacists identify
double-doctoring.

The Canadian Pharmacy Association is frustrated at the lack of a national
registry. Members say if the government had $1 billion for a gun registry,
there should be $50 million available to track prescription drugs.

"The federal government passed monitoring of drugs off to the provinces, so
the process is hit-and-miss," said association president George Murray,
owner of the Tantramar Pharmacy in Sackville, N.B. "Here in New Brunswick
there's no way to tell where people are going on the same day or how many
pharmacies they're hitting. Alberta and B.C. have the best systems."

Murray said the Atlantic provinces have seen a 400-per-cent increase in the
use of oxy drugs, particularly OxyContin. Its abuse has led to pharmacy
break-ins and home invasions of seniors.

Abusers who double-doctor using the Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB)plan, which
pays for medications for seniors and social assistance recipients, are
stealing from all taxpayers, said Det. Sgt. Lee Woodman of the OPP's drug
enforcement section.

"When people on welfare are double-doctoring and the ODB plan is paying, it
comes out of all our pockets. There is certainly a case to be made for
having drug information on a drug card. If the public is paying, the privacy
issue goes out the window," said Woodman, who supports a central registry
for pharmacies.

"It's odd to me in the face of so much double-doctoring going on that there
is no real system in place to prevent it. Pharmacies need to be better
linked."