OxyContin news stories on Newser

Welcome to 'Ground Zero' for America's Pill Poppers

Mark Russell — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:28:57 CDT

A tiny coal-mining town of barely 300 people and no supermarket is home to one booming business: pharmacies. In Kermit, West Virginia, two Sav-Rites alone moved 3.2 million doses of hydrocodone in 2006—a tad more than the 97,000 doses the average pharmacy sells in a year, reports...

Painkiller Sales Exploding in New Parts of US

Kate Schwartz — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:10:06 CDT

Prescription painkiller addiction is a problem that's only getting uglier, reports the AP after analyzing a slew of DEA and pharmaceutical figures. The report focuses on sales of America's leading two prescription painkillers: oxycodone (the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet, and Percodan) and hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab). Among its...

Drug Deaths Soar Past Traffic Fatalities

Mark Russell — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:07:05 CDT

For the first time since the government started tracking drug-related deaths in 1979, narcotics have topped traffic fatalities—37,485 for drugs vs. 36,284 for accidents in 2009 (the most recent year available), reports the LA Times . But the big culprit isn't street drugs: it's prescription pills like Xanax,...

Rocker Busted for Walgreens Robbery...

Evann Gastaldo — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:26:58 CDT

Coheed and Cambria was about to open for Soundgarden, but it looks like bassist Mike Todd had things other than soundcheck on his mind. He allegedly robbed a Massachusetts pharmacy just hours before yesterday's performance. Police say Todd entered a Walgreens around 1pm, told an employee he had a bomb,...

New OxyContin Formula Foils Drug Abusers

Kevin Spak — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:19:04 CDT

OxyContin abuse is becoming a thing of the past—sort of. Ever since Purdue Pharma reformulated its hit narcotic pills to make them harder to snort, chew, or inject, addicts have been looking elsewhere for their high, the New York Times reports. “It’s too much work,” says one ex-user. He...

Ohio County Drowning in Waves of Oxy

Polly Davis Doig — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:27:26 CDT

Scioto County sits in the southern tip of Ohio, an unremarkable piece of Appalachia save for the deadly tidal wave of prescription drugs washing over its population. Overdoses have quadrupled over the past decade, reports the New York Times , and are now the leading cause of accidental death, ahead of...

8M New Yorkers, 1M Oxycodone Prescriptions

John Johnson — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 06:23:52 CDT

New York City's special narcotics prosecutor unveiled some eye-popping numbers about prescription drugs in the Big Apple, according to the Wall Street Journal : One million prescriptions for the pain reliever oxycodone—the generic name for Oxycontin—were filled in 2010. That's enough for 1 in 8 residents of the five...

NYC Busts Drug-Dealing Ice Cream Truck

Rob Quinn — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:29:05 CDT

In New York City's Staten Island, oxycodone addicts were more enthusiastic than little kids about the arrival of the Lickety Split ice cream truck: Some 31 people have been indicted for running a drug ring that investigators say used the ice cream truck to sell the addictive prescription painkiller—and...

Gun-Toting Fed Judge Busted in Stripper Drug Buy

Rob Quinn — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:20:00 CDT

A Georgia federal judge is facing drugs and weapons charges in a case as bizarre as anything he's likely to have heard on the bench. Veteran judge Jack Camp, 67, was busted on charges of possessing cocaine, marijuana, and prescription painkillers after buying the drugs from an undercover agent, according...