Purdue Pharma fights OxyContin abuse

As with any drug, someone is always going to look to abuse the pain killing effects. Drug abusers quickly figured out that by crushing the pills they could get quicker effects by snorting or even injecting the pain killer. Being that OxyContin is an opiate, its effects have been compared to those achieved by using heroin. The drug's effects have garnered it the nickname "Hillbilly Heroin".

Purdue Pharma's new changes are aimed at preventing this sort of abuse.

The company has changed its design of the pills to include a plastic like coating which it believes will prevent users from crushing the tablets, or at least make it more difficult to do so. It is definitely a move in the right direction, but it is hard to believe that this will stop users that have already developed a taste for the drug. Hopefully it will prevent new users from developing such a habit, though.

Originally Purdue Pharma had intended to use the plastic coating just on its lower dosage pills, but now it aims to include the tamperproofing on all doses of the pain killer.

While it is certain that people will continue to abuse the drug, at least the company is trying to help curb the abuse that has become so widespread.

Of course, there is the other side of the coin: normal everyday people that develop an addiction to the drug. While it is encouraging what steps are being taken to avoid tampering abuse with the drug, there are still plenty of patients out there that will develop an addiction simply by using the drug as it is prescribed to them by their doctors. These changes will not reduce the chances of these such people developing an addiction... the responsibility for that lies with the doctors that prescribe the drugs to do so in a responsible manner and help educate their patients on the addictive properties of the drug.

Prescription drug abuse is a big problem in America. A study conducted in 2007 showed that around 5.2 million Americans reported using prescription pain killers in an inappropriate manner. Surely that number is much higher now, and the majority of these people did not start off buying their pills on the street, but instead were handed a bottle by their local pharmacist.

If the new tamperproof pills can prevent just one more person from overdosing, or developing a worse drug addiction than they already have, then this is definitely a good move for Purdue Pharma.