TEENS SMITTEN BY OXYCONTIN

Andrew Moskevich doesn't look like a recovering drug addict.

With his close-cropped brown hair and blue eyes, the 21-year-old looks more
like the prospective college student he is than a former drug-addicted teen
who forged dozens of checks to support a $400-a-day OxyContin habit.

It's just that averageness that worries Steve Tolman.

The Senate chairman of the state's Joint Committee on Mental Health and
Substance Abuse, Tolman this week said abuse of prescription drugs like
OxyContin has exploded among teens and college students. U.S. Rep. Stephen
Lynch, D-9th, wants to ban the drug outright.

That's how perilous OxyContin abuse has become.

Recent surveys conducted by the state Department of Public Health found
dramatic increases in the use of the drug -- which users grind up and snort
or mix with water to inject for a heroin-like high -- among 15- to
24-year-olds.

"I consider it a silent epidemic," Tolman said. "They're using this drug,
probably in a recreational way, thinking it's safe. But when they snort it,
they become addicted almost immediately."

In an effort to raise awareness of the drug's dangers, legislators and
members of the Massachusetts OxyContin Commission on May 23 will hold a
hearing on abuse of the drug, and other prescription drugs, at Framingham
State College.

For most users, though, the drug's cost -- an 80 milligram pill costs about
$80 on the street -- quickly becomes prohibitive. As an alternative, many
turn to heroin, which costs as little as $4 per bag.

It's a story Moskevich is all too familiar with.

By the time he began his freshman year at Peabody High School, he was
already experimenting with smoking pot, LSD and prescription drugs like Xanax.

It was during the town's International Festival that he first tried
OxyContin, and he remembers it making him sick. It wasn't until after
graduating from high school, however, that Moskevich first snorted the
drug. Within months, he said, he was using regularly.

"I was using, but I wasn't addicted," he said. "It was dangerous in the
sense that it was leading to something worse...it was really at the
crossroads. And then the summer of 2003 it got really crazy."

Instead of going to college, Moskevich took a nursing job, where he
continued to use the drug to help get through the long, 12-hour shifts.
Eventually, his drug use was discovered and he was quietly asked to quit.

Without a steady source of income, his addiction took hold, and Moskevich
turned to forging checks, stealing his father's ATM card, and even breaking
into neighbors' apartments to support his habit.

It wasn't until the day after Christmas two years ago that Moskevich
finally hit bottom.

After again stealing checks from his father to get high, he gave up,
eventually checking himself into a detox center, and later moving to the
Framingham area for a treatment program run by the South Middlesex
Opportunity Council.

"I think everything happens for a reason," Moskevich said. "I'm grateful,
as painful as it was, I am very grateful it happened the way it did."

Among many who use the drug, there's no happy ending.

Reports published by the Food and Drug Administration listed OxyContin as
the "main contributing" factor in 146 overdose deaths in 2002, and the
"likely contributing" factor in an additional 318 deaths.

In an effort to warn the public about the risks of abusing OxyContin and
other prescription drugs, Waltham Rep. Peter Koutoujian helped form the
Massachusetts OxyContin Commission.

The commission will hold several hearings over the next several months,
Koutoujian said, and hopes to produce a report by the fall, which will
include specific legislative and regulatory recommendations aimed at
curbing prescription drug abuse.

Part of the reason for the explosion of abuse among teens and college
students, he believes, is a mistaken belief that "prescription" drugs equal
"safe" drugs.

"It's legal. It's legally prescribed," he said. "So it's got this (image)
of being good. It's endorsed by the medical community.

"Two, it's readily available. They say 44 percent of prescription
medication kids get access to are those used by other family members. When
you find kids are drinking alcohol, the majority don't go to the liquor
store to get it, they go to the liquor cabinet. Here they're going to mom
and dad's medicine cabinet."

It's not just local legislators who are disturbed by the abuse of drugs
like OxyContin.

Purdue Pharma, the company that manufactures the drug, has spent more than
$200 million in an effort to develop drugs that eliminate the high that
abusers get by crushing the drug, Purdue Director of Public Affairs Jim
Heins said this week.

"(But) it's not so easy," he said. "If we bring them to market, they not
only have to be abuse-resistant, but they also have to be safe and
effective in relieving pain."

Besides Purdue, he said, more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies are
working to develop tamper resistant drugs.

The company is also working with law enforcement to track potential abusers
and to educate doctors about the proper uses of the drug, Heins said.

"It's a serious problem," he said. "It's a serious problem for people who
are abusing it. It's a serious problem for communities, and it's a serious
problem for patients who need it, because it's a higher barrier.

"There are 50 million people with chronic pain (in the U.S.) Not all are
candidates for the drug, but there are patients who need relief who are
either scared because they're misinformed about the risks...or the doctors
are saying I'm too afraid of regulatory scrutiny or the media coverage, and
I'm not going to use these medications."

As for Rep. Lynch, there don't seem to be many answers left.

"We've just come to an end point here with the amount of death and
addictions that have resulted from this one drug," he said this week about
his federal bill that seeks to pull the drug off the market. "I'm really at
wit's end to find a way to stop this."

OXYCONTIN BY THE NUMBERS

Often called Oxy, or hillbilly heroin, OxyContin typically comes in 20, 40
and 80 milligram tablets.

When legally sold, an 80 milligram tablet costs about $6. On the street,
the same tablet costs $80.

By comparison, heroin in Massachusetts sells for as little as $4 per bag.

Studies have shown one in 10 teens, or about 2.3 million teens, nationally
admits to trying OxyContin.

A University of Michigan study found that despite a 17 percent decrease in
drug use over the last four years, OxyContin use has increased by 49
percent among teens.

Non-medical use of OxyContin by people 12 and older rose by 400,000 between
2000 and 2003, to 2.8 million.

Between 1997 and 2002, prescription drug use rose by 400 percent. Abuse of
prescription drugs rose 300 percent over the same period.

SOURCE: DEA, Rep. Peter Koutoujian's office