SHERIFF REVEALS OXYCONTIN LINK TO HOMICIDE

Sheriff Steve Simpson dropped a bombshell last week when he revealed
for the first time that the controversial prescription painkiller
OxyContin was stolen last year during a homicide that remains
unsolved. Simpson's admission came during a meeting at county hall
convened by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-10th District) to discuss the
dangers of the illegal use of OxyContin in light of several recent
armed robberies where OxyContin was stolen from local pharmacies.

OxyContin is an opium-based painkiller related to heroin and morphine
that is manufactured by Purdue Pharma in time-release pill form.
Although it is a powerful prescription painkiller for treatment of
chronic, severe pain, the drug also has gained popularity among
abusers who crush the pills into powder, defeating the time-release
mechanism, and then snort or inject it for an immediate, highly
addictive high.

Abuse of the drug has devastated entire communities in southwest
Virginia and other areas of Appalachia, Wolf said, where robberies,
overdose deaths and homicides associated with its use have become
commonplace.

"It's kind of scary," Simpson said, noting those problems could
spread here "if we don't get real aggressive real quickly."

Simpson said there have been two cases of prescription fraud
associated with OxyContin in the last year and three robberies, which
occurred at pharmacies in Sterling in January and February. A Reston
man has been arrested in connection with one of those robberies.

Simpson's remark about the theft of OxyContin during an unsolved
homicide was a reference to the May 21 killing of Patrick B.
Hornbaker, who was found shot to death at his home off Route 9 near
the West Virginia border. Hornbaker had received treatment for
chronic pain since he was severely injured in a police pursuit years
earlier.

Authorities had privately conceded Hornbaker had been using
OxyContin, but had never before admitted that the drug was stolen
from the house during the killing. Simpson's admission raised the
possibility that a drug abuser's interest in obtaining the OxyContin
may have been the motive behind the killing, and the possibility that
the problems associated with OxyContin are more dire here than
previously believed.

Wolf, who held a Congressional hearing on the illegal use of the drug
in December, said controlling the spread of its abuse is the
priority. Wolf's subcommittee has a spending bill that directs the
Drug Enforcement Administration to develop a coordinated strategy
addressing the drug's illegal abuse. The bill also authorizes $2
million for states to develop prescription drug monitoring programs
to track doctor, pharmacy and patient information as a means to
squelch illegal practices.

"We don't want this to come to this region," Wolf said of the
problems. "We want to keep it from spreading ... , and we want to
wipe it out."

Drug Enforcement Administration officials at the meeting talked of
the challenges OxyContin poses when compared to other prescription
drugs that use the same active ingredient.

Percoset and Percodan, for instance, contain about 5 or 10 mg of the
active ingredient oxycodone, and mix it with aspirin or acetaminophin
that can cause liver problems in abusers, the officials said.
OxyContin, however, contains up to 80 mg of oxycodone with no
diluting aspirin or acetaminophen. Purdue Pharma even distributed the
drug in a 160 mg form in summer 2000, a formulation it has since
withdrawn.

Thus, officials said, an abuser intent on using OxyContin could get a
dose of the heroin-like oxycodone up to 16 times stronger than what
they might get from abusing Percoset or Percodan.

Purdue's sales of OxyContin topped $1 billion in 2000, with more than
two million prescriptions, DEA officials said.

Pharmacy thefts have been a problem nationally. In Boston, robbers
held nursing home residents and staff at bay while they collected
OxyContin. In Maine, abusers have altered prescription pads, writing
in OxyContin in place of other medicines prescribed by doctors.

In Mexico in October, nine armed robbers stole 900,000 OxyContin
pills. "We're not quite sure where they ended up after that," said
one DEA official.

Elsewhere, even doctors have been implicated in illegally or
improperly prescribing the drug to abusers. A Florida doctor was
convicted last week of manslaughter in the deaths of four patients
who died from OxyContin overdoses, the first time a doctor has been
found guilty of manslaughter or murder in an OxyContin death.

Wolf said Purdue is working on a "narcotic antagonist" that will
disable the drug's potency if an abuser tries to crush the pills into
powder, but the company has not announced any timetable for when such
a technology might be incorporated into the pills.

If OxyContin, when abused, shares the potential addictive properties
of other opium-based products such as heroin, its availability
increases the challenges for authorities. Unlike heroin, which is
typically smuggled into the country and must be purchased in
proverbial dark alleys, OxyContin is manufactured here, marketed to
family physicians and distributed in neighborhood pharmacies.

Wolf sent the General Accounting Office a letter in December
requesting a probe of the company's marketing practices for the drug.
He asked in the letter:

"Did the Food and Drug Administration mis-classify this powerful
narcotic for moderate to severe pain when it should have been limited
to treating chronic, severe pain?... Did the company market this drug
as a more effective replacement for other less addictive drugs? Is
there a direct correlation between the marketing strategies of the
drug and its excessive abuse?"