STOLEN DRUGS NOT GENERIC OXYCONTIN

Shipment, Van Taken Near Pikeville

PIKEVILLE - Investigators said yesterday that drugs stolen from a
mini-storage unit near Pikeville in April did not contain generic
OxyContin, a powerful painkiller that an Eastern Kentucky drug task force
says is already being sold on the black market.

Kentucky State Police Detective Eddie Crum said a Lexington-based
wholesaler, D&K Health Care Resources, has told the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency there was no generic OxyContin in the drug shipment taken April 29
from Nanack Inc.'s storage unit on Cowpen Road near U.S. 23.

Both Crum and Dan Smoot, chief law enforcement officer for UNITE, a
federally funded anti-drug task force, said last week that investigators
had been tipped that the generic OxyContin circulating in the mountain
region might have been a stolen shipment intended for local pharmacies.

"It looked like a good lead to start with, but it turned out to be a dead
end for us," Crum said.

Smoot and Crum said reports of drug dealers selling the generic painkiller
have been popping up in several communities east of Lexington. "It appears
most of them are coming from Ohio and Indiana," Smoot said.

Neither Floyd Fields of Nanack, Inc., nor Kevin Royse, operations manager
for D&K, could be reached for comment yesterday.

OxyContin is a long-lasting, time-release drug containing oxycodone that is
generally prescribed for patients suffering from chronic pain. When
swallowed whole, it can provide up to 12 hours of pain relief.

When crushed, however, it can be injected or snorted, producing a
potentially lethal high. More than 100 deaths have been linked to overdoses
of the drug.

Two Pennsylvania-based pharmaceutical companies, Endo of Chadds Ford, and
Teva, an Israeli-owned company with a U.S. subsidiary in North Wales, have
received approval to sell 80 milligram generic OxyContin tablets.

Purdue Pharma, the company that created the drug, has a federal patent
lawsuit pending. Meanwhile, Endo has said it will not market its product
until the suit is settled, but Teva has begun marketing its version.

Crum expressed relief that the generic "didn't come from this load," but
said the Pikeville theft is still under investigation.

An armored van out of Lexington delivered a load of Schedule II narcotics
to Pikeville on April 29, Crum said. The plan was for the van and drugs to
stay in storage for about two hours until they could be picked up by other
couriers and shipped to pharmacies, he said.

Meantime, someone stole the van and drugs, although police later located
the van.