YOU PAY FOR JUNKIE DRUG RORT

THE painkiller oxycodone, heavily subsidised by taxpayers, has
overtaken heroin as the most popular drug in the Kings Cross injecting
room as evidence emerges of a booming black market.

About 8200 of 17,971 drug injections in the room used the tablet
painkiller, dubbed "hillbilly heroin". In comparison, just 6110
injections during the same June quarter period involved heroin,
figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal.

Medicare Australia figures show taxpayers paid $53.2 million in
2007-08 to subsidise 1.63 million scripts through the Pharmaceutical
Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Seven years ago, in the 2000-01 period, the cost to taxpayers was just
$8.5 million for 441,398 scripts.

The drug, a morphine derivative, is available with PBS subsidy to
treat severe, disabling pain commonly felt by cancer patients and high
level back or tooth ache.

The growing use of oxycodone in the injecting room - triggered by the
heroin drought - was an accurate sample of drug trends in the wider
community, experts said last night. Tablets were almost certainly
obtained through doctor shopping, the practice of attending numerous
doctors with fake symptoms to access the drug for personal use or dealing.

Doctor's prescriptions for oxycodone have exploded in recent years,
with an undetermined amount of it now finding its way on to the black
market, as has occurred in the US. It is dubbed "hillbilly heroin"
because it is widely used by poorer residents in parts of the US.

The figures on use in the injecting room were contained in the June
quarterly report for the facility, released under Freedom of
Information laws.

There is now so much oxycodone in the injecting room that staff hand
out filters to users to screen talc and other binding agents as
addicts prepare the oral tablet for injection.

Oxycodone is the generic name for the drug available under a number of
names, usually OxyContin, OxyNorm or Endone or even in suppository
form branded Proladone.

Tablets that cost $1.50 over the counter sell for more than $50 on the
black market and drug squad commander Superintendent Greig Newbury
said its illegal use was an unprecedented problem.

James Pitts, chief executive officer of the rehabilitation
organisation Odyssey House, said there had been a significant increase
in the numbers of people seeking help for addiction to oxycodone.

He put the reason down to a heroin drought and because the drug was
available from doctors.

"It is a slow-release morphine derivative and people probably have
their own particular doctors who prescribe it or they shop around at
different doctors," Mr Pitts said. "It is not uncommon to forge
prescriptions. People will steal prescription pads."