Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jul 2001
Source: Des Moines Register (IA)
Copyright: 2001 The Des Moines Register.
Contact:  http://www.dmregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/123
Author: Leslie Miller, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?186 (Oxycontin)

OXY CRAZE MAKES WAY TO CITIES

BOSTON (AP) - Armed robbers looking for the powerful painkiller 
OxyContin have hit a dozen drug stores around Boston over the past 
three months - a sign that the ``hillbilly heroin'' has moved into 
the urban Northeast.

Gunmen in baseball caps and bandannas over their faces bound a 
pharmacist and two clerks with duct tape on Sunday and stole the drug 
from Wells Drug in the Boston suburb of Woburn. The same day, another 
gun-wielding robber hit Brooks Pharmacy in Somerville.

The robberies come in the wake of reports last year by police, 
pharmacists and drug counselors of an alarming incidence of OxyContin 
abuse in rural areas of Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, 
Kentucky and Maryland. The drug has been blamed for scores of deaths, 
mostly in the South.

Since then, numerous overdoses have also been reported in 
Philadelphia and throughout Florida.

``The problem first arose in rural areas. Now it's quickly migrated 
to more populous areas,'' said Charles Miller, spokesman for the 
National Drug Intelligence Center, part of the U.S. Justice 
Department. ``There's a large potential for it to spread very 
rapidly.''

OxyContin abuse first exploded in rural Maine and Appalachia because 
of the poor economy, a scarcity of cocaine and heroin and large 
populations of elderly people who use the drug to relieve the pain of 
cancer or other illnesses.

If taken properly, the synthetic morphine is released slowly into the 
body, but abusers crush the pills and inhale or inject the powder to 
get the same kind of euphoric high that heroin brings. OxyContin has 
been linked to at least 120 overdose deaths nationwide.

``In the last six months, we've had a huge increase in the number of 
losses resulting from OxyContin,'' said Chuck Young, executive 
director of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy. 
Employee theft has contributed to the problem, he said.

Detective Lt. James Pierce, who heads a group of Massachusetts 
detectives investigating the robberies around Boston, said he is 
worried that someone is going to get hurt.

``They're obviously getting more brazen,'' Pierce said.

Pharmacists are on edge.

Paul Hackett tells his employees never to be alone in his Weymouth 
pharmacy, where someone tried but failed to break in last week.

He said OxyContin should be reclassified so its theft or misuse 
brings stiffer penalties, and doctors need to be educated about how 
dangerous and addictive the drug is.

``Police on foot patrol can't touch a fraction of what's going on,'' he said.
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