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Reported high-profile users include Lindsay Lohan, Jack Osbourne, Courtney Love and Winona Ryder. Britney Spears reportedly swallowed two bottles of OxyContin before an intense stand-off with armed police and a specialist SWAT team in which she refused to hand over her sons.DJ AM, Sherry Johnston, Rush Limbaugh& Rudy Giuliani
Pharma and OxyContin
Feds Focus on Heath Ledger's Vicodin, Oxycontin Supplier
The high-profile disc jockey, DJ AM, 36, whose real name was Adam Goldstein, overdosed. An accident or suicide? He was found dead in his SoHo apartment August 28, 2009. Mr. Goldstein had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction as a young adult, but said he had been sober for about 11 years.
Nine OxyContin pills were found in his body. Eight undigested pills with the letters “OC” on it, were found in his throat, and another in his mouth, an official said.
A Breakup and Lingering Pain Over Crash in DJ AM's Final DaysDJ AM and Travis Barker
South Carolina crash
Mothers Against Medical Abuse. Org (MAMA.Org)
Helping to Stop Rx, Methadone Deaths and Abuse
OxyContin robberies in Washington have prompted an unprecedented response from one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains. Walgreen locks up it's Oxy.
'Hillbilly heroin' for a reason?
Drug Addiction By Substance
How to quit pain pills...
Oxycontin addiction has become one of the leading problems in prescription drug abuse/addiction in America today.
The following OxyContin excerpt is from the must read blog
Frozen Justice: DISCUSSING POLITICS AND INJUSTICE IN ALASKA
The problems of addiction to Oxycodone drugs is growing and the withdrawal symptoms are excruciating, thus leading to crimes such as robbery, theft, and prescription fraud. Lives are being ruined and people who trusted their doctors, drug companies, FDA, and DEA now have criminal records because they just could not stop using the drug. To add to the problem early on addicts figured out they could crush the long acting pills and take all of the oxycodone it contained at one time. Some Oxycontin addicts have turned to Heroin because it is cheaper to get.
The company that makes the narcotic painkiller OxyContin and three current and former executives pleaded guilty today in federal court here to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused.To resolve criminal and civil charges related to the drug’s “misbranding”, the parent of Purdue Pharma, the company that markets OxyContin, agreed to pay more than $600 million in fines. That is the third-highest amount ever paid by a drug company in such a case.
Federal officials said that internal Purdue Pharma documents show that company officials recognized even before the drug was marketed that they would face stiff resistance from doctors concerned about the potential of a high-powered narcotic like OxyContin to be abused by patients or cause addiction.
As a result, company officials developed a fraudulent marketing campaign designed to promote OxyContin as a time-released drug that was less prone to such problems. OxyContin is made of a long-used narcotic, oxycodone. But unlike other medications like Percocet that also contain the narcotic, OxyContin is pure oxycodone and, because it is a time-released drug, contains it in very high doses. The drug is valuable in treating serious, long-lasting pain, but is being prescribed for moderate pain by a lot of doctors.
(Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help)
Just a few years after the drug’s introduction in 1996, annual sales reached $1 billion. They told doctors Oxycontin was less addictive than other pain pills in the same category knowing full well the opposite was true. They targeted family practice doctors who had little experience treating people with severe pain or recognizing when their patients were addicted. Some of the sales people even made up fake graphs and charts. They created an epidemic of people who are unable to stop using this drug on their own. Not one of them went to jail even though there were criminal charges, with the help of Rudy Giuliani.One of the things which is really bothering me about medicine right now is it’s denial about addiction. They call addiction from narcotics prescribed by a doctor physical dependence and claim this is different from addiction. We have been told all kinds raltionale such as people who have real pain do not get addicted. Of course they do. It may be a situation where it can't be helped and a patient has a very good reason to take the medication, but come on, addiction is addiction is addiction. I have to wonder which drug company paid for that idea to be disseminated in the medical community. They changed the name and made prescription medication caused addiction a whole different disease, which they would say I just can't understand. Oh, I understand it intimately. It is a lot less litigiously risky for a doctor to tell a patient they have a dependence or tolerance than you are addicted now isn't it?
The truth is anyone can become addicted if they take a narcotic long enough. Narcotic use for pain management is a blessing in the appropriate patients with proper medical management. I do not advocate suffering. I have seen many people who narcotics have helped. What I am opposed to are the lies and manipulations to get people addicted to increase drug sales and make millions off of the suffering of thousands of people. They influence doctors to use narcotics when other choices would be better for the patient and society. We have a sick care system instead of a health care system, there is little time to teach about or little reward for using non-narcotic methods of pain management. It is easier and cheaper to just give patients pain pills. I hoped for a health care system which changes this and a lot of other issues, but my hope is fading fast. If I had been told Stadol was highly addicting I would not have taken it in the early 90s. If my colleague had know Tramadol was a narcotic she would have taken Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen instead for her headache. Our addiction to narcotics has been engineered by the pharmaceutical industry. They did it with the intent of getting a captive group of consumers without regard for the suffering it has caused. Our regulating body the FDA has been complicit as well as politicians who are bought off and pass regulations making it easier for them to market these drugs to an unsuspecting country.
See The White House's Health Industry Guest List
Prescriber profiles.
Sale of Physician Prescribing Profiles
Sevostianova N, Danysz W, Bespalov AY. Analgesic effects of morphine and loperamide in the rat formalin test: Interactions with NMDA receptor antagonists. Eur J Pharmacol. 2005;525:83–90.
Menendez L, Lastra A, Meana A, Hidalgo A, Baamonde A. Analgesic effects of loperamide in bone cancer pain in mice. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2005;81:114–121.
Pharmaceutical Executive pdf
Obama on Drugs: 98% Cheney?
by Greg Palast Thursday, August 13, 2009
United States: Health Law Advisory: Federal Court Upholds Vermont Law Restricting The Sale And Use Of Prescriber-Identifiable Data
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