OPIATE OF THE STARS

With as much as 10 times the active opiate ingredient as other
painkillers, OxyContin was marketed as a powerful relief with a
built-in safety measure: a time-release formula that allowed the
drug's opiate to be delivered over a 12-hour period.

Other painkillers, including OxyContin's predecessor, Tylox, contained
only five mg of opiate, but oxy was made available in 20-, 40- or
80-mg doses. An aggressive marketing campaign, cut with the euphoric
powers of oxy, mainlined the drug to the top of the pain-relief charts.

In 2000, 5.8 million oxy prescriptions were written in the United
States. But shortly after its debut, an unforeseen side effect
surfaced among rural teens in the United States, who discovered they
could disable the time-release mechanism by crushing the drug into
powder. When snorted, oxy delivered a powerful morphine-like high.

The pharmaceutical fad escaped the bounds of "just say no"
after-school specials. Suddenly, the drug of choice was one that was
sold in convenient screw-top bottles, not through back-alley deals.

In pockets of rural Maine, Pennsylvania and the Appalachian areas of
Virginia and Kentucky, many people who were disabled or chronically
ill suddenly found themselves with a highly marketable medicinal commodity.

There are 59 products available containing the opiate oxycodone,
according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is the active
ingredient in brand medications such as Percocet, Percodan, Endocet,
OxyCodan and OxyContin.

Among the best-known abusers of "hillbilly heroin" are Rush Limbaugh,
the right-wing U.S. radio host, and rocker Courtney Love, regularly in
the news for her off-stage performances.

Before admitting to his own addiction to OxyContin and other
painkillers last October, Limbaugh used his talk-show pulpit to rail
against drugs and insist that addicts be jailed.

Love told police that she was on OxyContin when she was arrested that
same month outside her ex-boyfriend's house.

Sold for $1 a milligram -- $40 for one 40-mg pill -- oxy became a
quick and painless alternative income. But as the pill's popularity
spread, its recreational side effect induced rashes of burglaries and
armed robberies.

Some pharmacies stopped carrying the drug while doctors, such as the
one who stocked Winona Ryder's personal purse pharmacy, faced requests
for oxy prescriptions to treat even the most minor complaint. In 2003,
a West Virginia woman, Brianna Marie Burns, 23, was arrested on
charges of trying to sell her two-year-old son for $500 so she could
buy oxy.

The Federal Drug Administration has linked the drug to approximately
400 deaths and in the summer of 2000, Purdue Pharma formed a team to
deal with the negative backlash of its top product.

Faced with several class-action lawsuits, the company was condemned by
U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who called OxyContin a "very,
very dangerous drug."

Company spokesmen claimed drug abuse was a societal ill, not linked to
specific products, but launched an aggressive $130-million US
advertising campaign to discourage the abuse of prescription
narcotics, without naming names.

Despite the company's attempts to play down the role of their product
in prescription pill popularity, OxyContin has become the "mother's
little helper" of the new millennium.

U.S. drug-monitoring companies list oxy as one of the most abused
drugs in higher socio-economic brackets, while a recent episode of The
O.C., a Fox network show, gave it a pro-bono plug.

"Maybe he's on OxyContin," said one character. "OxyContin is
gnarly."

Gnarly in more ways than one as prescription drug abuse is ravaging
the United States. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
four million Americans are using such drugs for "non-medical" reasons.

There has not been a Canadian celebrity endorsement of OxyContin but
the drug is making its presence known north of the border.

The emergence of oxy on the east coast is worrying because it follows
the demographic and geographic pattern of abuse traced throughout the
United States.

The painkiller earned its hillbilly heroin label in the United States
through its use in rural areas marked by high unemployment and a lack
of economic opportunity.

Oxy invariably flourishes in towns that are remote, far from the
network through which heroin and cocaine usually travel.