Opana Overtakes Oxycontin as Prescription Abuse Surges in U.S.
Humans adapt. This has been proven over centuries of history. They adapt and they survive. This shows to be just as true for the drug abusers in society. When drug enforcement agencies and the pharmaceutical companies make changes to increase the difficulty in obtaining prescription pain medication and altering it to get high, drug addicts find new ways to get their fix. This has been the case with the increase in popularity of Opana as drug abusers found more difficulty in using Oxycontin.
Pharmacy Hold Up
In June of this year, a man walked into a Fort Wayne, Ind., drugstore on a Saturday morning. He was masked and after approaching the pharmacy counter and seeing that it was closed, he left. The man returned an hour later and entered the store across the street, wearing the same mask. The police were waiting as the employees from the first drugstore had reported the occurrence. According to police, he handed the pharmacist a list of drugs written on a napkin and informed the pharmacist that he would kill him if he didn’t give him the drugs. A police officer caught the suspect as he fled from the store, holding the prescription painkillers.
According to a police spokeswoman, the June incident was the 11th pharmacy robbery in Fort Wayne this year, which is an unusually high number of occurrences for a city of 250,000 citizens. In almost every case, the robbers have asked specifically for Opana, a powerful prescription painkiller.
So why the new demand in the use of Opana over Oxycontin in prescription painkiller abusers?
The Change In The Oxycontin Formula
Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin’s manufacturer, changed its formula in an attempt to stop abusers from breaking, crushing or dissolving the pill so that it would be injected or snorted to achieve a high. In fact, with the way the drug has been reformulated, it is nearly impossible to crush, inject or dissolve. Some OxyContin addicts can still abuse the drug by taking larger quantities. However, some users prefer the ability to inject the drug to get high and when the formula changed, they panicked. Internet chat rooms became flooded with addicts trying to find ways to overcome the barriers of the new formula. Opana entered in as the new drug of choice.
No Matter The Brand Prescription Abuse Still Surges In The US
The fact of the matter is, per the Office of National Drug Control Policy, prescription drug abuse is the United States fastest-growing drug problem. The abuse of powerful painkillers has even been classified as an epidemic by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To be blunt, 1.3 emergency room visits related to powerful painkillers took place in 2010, a 115% increase since 2004. In 2008, there were 20,044 overdose deaths from opioid pain relievers, surpassing not only deaths from heroin and cocaine for the first time but reaching a number greater than all other illicit drugs combined.
Experts from the Narconon drug rehabilitation program predict that when a new and harder-to-abuse Opana formula is released to deter addicts from abusing the painkiller, addicts may once again turn to heroin. Or another painkiller may be released and will be the next major drug of abuse in the country.
No matter the changes in trends and new drugs, one thing is for certain. That is that those addicted need immediate and professional help. And, more educational efforts need to be made to warn people of the dangers of prescriptions. For more information on prescription drug abuse visit https://www.narconon.org/drug-abuse/prescription/.
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