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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Cents a milligram, compared to $1 a milligram for the old pill. In one study of people treated at rehab centers, scientists from the research company Inflexxion and Purdue Pharma found that since the new OxyContin came onto the market, abuse fell by 41 percent.One dissenting study comes from RTI International, which did not receive Purdue funding. In a nationally representative survey, the research nonprofit found OxyContin abuse rates didn’t change much after the new OxyContin appeared on pharmacy shelves. It appears un-crushable OxyContin does put off a small number of users, specifically those that seem to use crushed OxyContin and heroin interchangeably, says Scott Novak, a statistician who performed RTI International’s analysis. Take the effect to the overall population, however, and it’s not significant.Why wouldn’t a plasticky pill put off OxyContin abusers? One possibility is that people have gotten around the Intac technology. Human ingenuity knows no bounds. Another is that not every abuser crushes his or her pills. It’s still possible to get a high, though perhaps not as big of a rush, by taking OxyContin orally. Although detailed numbers on how many people crush versus how many people swallow are difficult to come by, it’s widely acknowledged in the scientific literature that some abusers simply swallow the pills, and that they won’t be affected by the new formula.As for those who are deterred, some preliminary numbers show that they’re replacing their pills with other drugs.In a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and Nova Southeastern University in Florida found that in telephone interviews, the number of drug abusers who said they primarily abused OxyContin fell by 64 percent. At the same time, those same abusers reported higher rates of using other prescription opioid drugs and heroin, which is an opioid, if not a prescription one.Richard Dart, executive director of the Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-Related Surveillance program, says he also has preliminary data showing that those other abuses rise. It will be another year before he’ll have the data fully analyzed. “I think it’s clear
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