Sticky OxyContin Met With Little Enthusiasm by Addiction Experts
In a recent article coming out of Massachusetts, some people who have had a closer look at the "sticky OxyContin" we wrote about a few months back are not very impressed that it is going to lessen the epidemic of addiction to opiates and subsequent overdose.
We’ve written the past about the new “tamper
resistant OxyContin” or “sticky
OxyContin.” Unfortunately the jury is still out on what kind of upgrade
this is.
Oxycontin is known as Oxys or OCs and the active ingredient is also found in Roxicodone (a.ka. Roxys or Roxies) and OxyFast. The new Version of the drug scheduled for 2012 - OxyNEO will most likely contain the same formula characteristics that make the current version more difficult to abuse.
Certainly, we welcome any change whatsoever to the existing OxyContin formulation that has caused so many people to become addicted and ruined so many lives. Unfortunately, some addiction experts in Massachusetts are not impressed with the drug and warn that the drug can not only still be abused by opiate users, but also may heat the drug to get an even more potent dose of OxyContin than the way the older version of OxyContin was abused.
In an article published in the Brockton Enterprise Larry Golbom who is a pharmacist and creator of http://www.PrescriptionAddictionRadio talked about how the drug may be heated up and injected. When reading that we can’t help but wonder if the sticky nature of the new OxyContin would actually cause more people to heat and inject it (because they have no choice) where they wold have rather used the Oxy by crushing or snorting it instead.
Another sizzling quote from the Brockton Enterprise article is Mary D’Eramo’s quoate that: “OxyContin should be taken off the market. There are other drugs out there. OxyContin hurts far more people and costs far more lives than it has ever saved.”
What We Know About the New OxyContin
Of course, the first obvious problem with “sticky” Oxies that we noted was that if you take the drug the good old fashioned way (by popping the pills in your mouth), you can just adjust your dosage of the tablets to compensate for not being able to crush the drug up for quicker absorption into the bloodstream.
Also, we know that if the active ingredient is oxycodone then OxyContin is going to be as addictive as it ever was.
This isn’t to say that we aren’t encouraged by this development but after our exposure to the wreckage that OxyContin has caused in families that we treat, we’d be more inclined to agree with Mary D’Eramo’s quote above. The question that should be asked is: “Why is OxyContin even legal and in production?”
Take it off the market