Pubdate: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Section: National Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Fox Butterfield Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?186 (Oxycontin) THEFT OF PAINKILLER REFLECTS ITS POPULARITY ON THE STREET WEYMOUTH, Mass., July 6 - On the afternoon of the Fourth of July, a slow business day, a young man walked into the Walgreen's on this town's main thoroughfare and said he had a gun. He did not want money. All he wanted was OxyContin, 1,100 pills of the powerful prescription painkiller, which would be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the street. It was the latest in a series of 14 robberies of pharmacies in Boston and its suburbs in the last six weeks. The robbers have ignored cash registers and other drugs and taken only OxyContin, which gives a heroinlike high without the needles or the stigma. The holdups in the Boston area are part of a surge in OxyContin robberies and thefts of drugstores in several states, from Maine and Vermont in New England to Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky in the nation's midsection, and as far south as Florida and as far west as California. "These robberies are surprising to us," said Michael Moy, chief of the drug operations section of diversion control for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Usually if people are going to rob a pharmacy, they are going to ask for all the controlled substances, or ask for money in the cash register." The surge in OxyContin robberies, Mr. Moy said, seems to reflect the high price the drug now commands on the street and its powerfully addictive high. The street value is $1 a milligram, and the pills, manufactured by Purdue Pharma L.P. , come in dosages of 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 milligrams. In the robberies in the Boston area, only one suspect has been caught, an 18-year-old identified by the police as Shawn Noonan, who was arrested and charged with armed robbery in suburban Peabody on Monday. But James Pierce, who is chief of detectives in Winchester and head of a regional law enforcement task force on the drugstore robberies, said he believed that about 85 percent of the robberies were being committed by the same group of young white men. "They follow the identical pattern, and they know what they're doing," Detective Pierce said. "They work in teams of two or three, brandishing firearms, and they order the customers in the store to the ground, while one guy goes to the counter and demands the OxyContin," he said. Nobody has been injured or shot, Detective Pierce said. But the robberies have caused deep concern around Boston. On Tuesday, two of the largest supermarket chains in New England, Shaws and Star Market, announced they would stop carrying OxyContin in their pharmacies. Customers will still be able to fill their OxyContin prescriptions, but they will have to wait up to three days while a supply is ordered, a spokesman said. Shaws and Star Market are owned by J. Sainsbury, Britain's second-biggest supermarket company. At the small Hingham Centre Pharmacy, in Hingham, a suburb just south of Weymouth, Paul Mabey, the pharmacist and co-owner, had signs printed up last week that he put in the front window and on the counter: "For everyone's safety, we no longer stock the painkiller OxyContin." "I thought people were becoming afraid to come in, because of the robberies," Mr. Mabey said. His fellow owner disagreed, saying the signs themselves were scaring people and causing too much comment. So he took the signs down. Nonetheless, the store no longer stocks OxyContin and must order it from a supplier to fill a prescription. In the past month, there have also been robberies of OxyContin in pharmacies in Manchester, Vt.; Roseland, Fla.; Cudahy, Wis.; and Overland Park, Kan., the local police said. Mr. Moy, of the federal drug agency, said the OxyContin robberies seemed to cluster in certain states. Among those with the most serious problem of pharmacy robberies since last October, he said, were Kentucky, with 55, or 5.5 percent, of its 1,000 drugstores, and Maine with 12, or 4 percent, of its 300 drugstores. Florida, with 63, and Pennsylvania, with 71, reported the most OxyContin robberies, Mr. Moy said. New York has recorded 21 such incidents since October, he said, and California has reported 26, though both states are larger than the other leaders and have many more pharmacies. Capt. Jim Thomas of the police in Weymouth, where the robbery took place at the Walgreen's on Wednesday, said he was receiving a quick education in the abuse of OxyContin. "They call it the hillbilly heroin," Captain Thomas said, because of its popularity in Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia, as well as rural parts of Maine. "By having it, it's like having cash in your hand," he said. "You can sell it easily on the street. We've even got reports of it being sold in Weymouth," an old middle- and working-class town on Massachusetts Bay south of Boston. While OxyContin is designed to release its active ingredient, oxycodone, over 12 hours, abusers can get an immediate high by crushing the pills and snorting or injecting the powder. In Bowling Green, Ky., employees of Apothecare Pharmacy got tired of being targets last year after thieves twice stole their supply of OxyContin. So the workers filled two large OxyContin bottles with leftover Halloween candy and left them as decoys. In May, the burglars struck again, and made off with the candy. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth