OXYCONTIN RUSHES INTO STATE'S DRUG LEXICON

If you believe a woman named Wilma Cline, the nationally syndicated radio
personality Rush Limbaugh would drive three miles from his $23 million Palm
Beach, Fla., estate to a Denny's parking lot so that she could hand over a
cigar box concealing dozens of tiny prescription painkillers.

The loquacious Limbaugh, his housekeeper says, was often high on "hillbilly
heroin."

Limbaugh has not been charged with any crime. But in the court of public
opinion, the jury on the East Coast is more likely to nod in knowing
disapproval because OxyContin is never far from the headlines. Meanwhile, in
California, Limbaugh's listeners are probably wondering: What in the world is
OxyContin?

One of 59 prescription pain-relievers using the active ingredient oxycodone,
OxyContin is most commonly prescribed for cancer patients and others with
chronic, debilitating pain. Oxycodone is not new. Neither is its potential for
abuse. German researchers noted "striking euphoria" among users of the drug as
early as the 1920s, according to a DEA position paper.

Police didn't become alarmed until 1995, when drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma
began producing a powerful time-released version it called OxyContin.

The brand, which is lauded by pain-control advocates, has proven to be the
scourge of law enforcement east of the Continental Divide.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports 454 deaths in 32 states were
likely due to OxyContin abuse in 2000 and 2001. The agency determined that
nearly 11,000 emergency room visits were due to OxyContin abuse in 2001, a
number that has tripled since 1996. The states of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West
Virginia and Virginia all report that at least 50 percent of new drug treatment
patients land in rehab due to OxyContin.

Yet in the Bay Area -- a place much of the country considers synonymous with
drug abuse because of the excesses of the 1960s -- the painkiller is all but
unheard of.

"I can't remember a case and I've been here a year and a half," said Capt.
Trisha Sanchez, commander of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Narcotics Task
Force. "There may be individual cases that I wouldn't have heard of, but we
haven't seen anything significant."

Why? Why would a drug have such lethal consequences seemingly everywhere but
here?

OxyContin abuse took root in rural communities and quickly became just another
cash crop. Down-and-out drug users began pilfering painkillers prescribed to
relatives. Before long, they were complaining to their own doctors of phantom
ailments that would require medication for pain. Then pharmacies were targeted.
Hundreds of pharmacies in the east will no longer carry the drug because it has
become such a fashionable target for thieves.

Rich Meyer, a special agent in the DEA's San Francisco field office, has an
economic theory to explain why the drug has been slow to take hold in
California. OxyContin sells for about $1 per milligram on the street, Meyer
notes. That means a single 80-milligram pill would cost $80. Mexican "black
tar" heroin can be found on California city streets in $20 packets.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy posits that
methamphetamine is king here, crowding out all other drugs.

"The San Francisco Bay Area has become a major center for production and
distribution of methamphetamine," according to a profile compiled by the Drug
Control Policy Office. "Most of the methamphetamine used in the United States
is from trafficking groups operating with the supply from California."

California's profile mentions OxyContin only once: "In Los Angeles, the
diversion and abuse of OxyContin is considered somewhat serious."

"People have preferences," explained Gabrielle Antolovich, executive director
of the National Council of Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Silicon Valley
chapter. "It's pretty common that there are East Coast drugs and West Coast
drugs."

But Terrence McGee says that might all be changing.

"I would say we see three or four cases every three months," said McGee, lead
counselor for First Chance, a non-profit drug treatment center in San Mateo
County. "A lot of people are scared of heroin, but people get this medication
from their doctor. They don't understand that you can be addicted in five days.
They don't realize the consequences."

And McGee noted that prescription drug use is far more acceptable in the
suburbs than heroin addiction.

"I would say that, yeah, we will be seeing more of this -- especially in San
Mateo County," he said.