HEARING SEEKS ANSWERS IN OXYCONTIN ABUSE

Better education for patients and doctors. Abuse-resistant drugs.

Electronic tracking of prescriptions. Pumping more money into programs to
treat addicts. Even random drug tests.

Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives OxyContin Commission
heard all these ideas and more in a nearly three-hour hearing yesterday in
Framingham on prescription drug abuse, particularly OxyContin.

"This is not someone else's problem, this is everyone's problem,"
commission co-chairman Rep. Peter Koutoujian (D-Newton) said at the
hearing's outset. "We all tend to think in terms of OxyContin, but there
are a lot of prescription drugs we need to be concerned about."

The greatest weapon against abuse is one doctors, pharmacists and
legislators and even patients already possess - information, said Steve
Grossman, owner of Brookline-based J.E. Pierce Apothecary Inc.

Though the state already has a program in place to monitor prescriptions
for powerful drugs such as OxyContin, Grossman said he has never been
warned off filling a prescription for a patient, or about over-prescribing
by a doctor.

"It's the dissemination of that information that's so critical," he said.

"But if I don't know if (someone) is coming up in your computer as
questionable, I'm going to assume he's good."

Meanwhile, Grossman said, laws designed to protect patients, such as the
Health Insurance Portability Act, are making it tougher for pharmacists and
doctors to spot abusers.