Will Canada’s New Oxycodone Formulation—OxyNeo—Solve the Prescription Pain Reliever Problem?
After years of negotiating, Purdue Pharmaceutical and the Canadian Government finally settled on a way to improve the abuse and addiction problem that exists with OxyContin. On March 1, 2012, the new formulation called OxyNeo hit the shelves of pharmacies across Canada.
OxyNeo is only available in Canada. Now, instead of a dose of oxycodone that can be crushed and snorted, dissolved and injected or just swallowed, oxycodone is now formulated into a pill that is too hard to crush. Alternately, if those bent on abuse try to dissolve the pill, it turns into a thick jelly substance that won’t pass through a syringe.
The US Has Already Been Through this Transition
In the US, a new formulation of OxyContin that was supposedly less abusable was released in 2011. For the US, oxycodone was embedded in a tough glue-like substance. It did not take long for this abuse protection to be circumvented but instead of taking the extensive steps needed to abuse the pills, some people simply switched to other pain pills or heroin. News reports from the west coast, Michigan, Missouri and other areas all attest to the increase in heroin abuse and overdose deaths.
This trend, of course, creates a concern that those in Canada who had been abusing the drug may now switch to heroin with its less-predictable purity and potency. It is estimated that most of the 200,000 prescription drug addicts in Canada prefer OxyContin and so now may have to work out another solution.
What these people really need is the type of lasting recovery provided by the Narconon recovery program in dozens of other locations around the world. There are many Narconon reviews of graduates who have completely turned their life around and are now giving back to their community.
The First Week Brings the First OxyNeo Death
Canadians who were already being prescribed OxyContin immediately started being transitioned over to OxyNeo. With OxyContin prescriptions growing to 1.6 million scripts per year, this means an enormous task to safely transition users to this new drug. Although it was attributed as possibly occurring from transition problems, one death was reported in the first week OxyNeo was in circulation.
This death and the hundreds of thousands abusing OxyContin or other prescription pain relievers points out the importance of directly addressing and eliminating addiction. The other part of the equation is educating young people so they understand for themselves why they should not start abusing drugs. When these two solutions are in place, then extraordinary chemical measures are not needed.
When even a person who has been unable to recover from opiate addiction through other methods can find sobriety at a Narconon center, then Canada may also one day be able to dispense with the clean shooting rooms of Vancouver and needle distribution and other harm reduction programs in other cities. The Narconon program uses tools like sauna, exercise, nutrition, counseling and life skills training to bring an addicted person out of the addicted lifestyle and help them create a new sober life.
When strong pain relievers are needed to provide an acceptable quality of life for a person who has suffered injury or illness, there is OxyNeo. For the person who wishes to break free from pain reliever dependence or abuse, there is Narconon.
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