In his statement announcing Purdue’s $634 million dollars in fines, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee cited a Drug Enforcement Agency report from 2002 that stated that “oxycodone-related deaths increased 400 percent between 1996 and 2001” while prescriptions for the drug rose from 300,000 to nearly 6 million annually as a result of Purdue’s marketing tactics.
The drug hit some localities particularly hard. In 2004, after losing sixteen young citizens to OxyContin in two and a half years, the mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts assigned a task force to investigate the problem. Finally, public attention on the fatal potential of this drug may cause these casualties to decline.
But now, what about those left behind? Those who took prescribed OxyContin for pain and then found they couldn’t quit or even reduce their dosage without grueling withdrawal symptoms. The young people who wanted to party with a prescription drug, figuring that was safer than an illicit drug, but found their lives drastically altered by an addiction.
According to court papers filed by Purdue, OxyContin brought the company at least $10.2 billion in sales between 1995 and 2006. “That is more than 100 million prescriptions,” noted Ryan Thorpe, Admissions Director of Narconon Arrowhead, one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Canadian, Oklahoma, “How many of those millions became addicted and are in desperate need of help now?”
When Purdue’s $634 million dollars in federally-mandated fines is divided up, not one dollar is designated for drug treatment programs for OxyContin addicts to help clean up the human wreckage for which the marketing of the drug was responsible. “This disgraceful chapter will only be closed when those addicted to OxyContin receive effective drug rehabilitation,” Thorpe stated. “At Narconon Arrowhead, we specialize in withdrawing people safely and with minimal discomfort from alcohol or drugs such as OxyContin, in removing the toxic residuals that cause the cravings, and in building the life skills that help people stay safe from drug and alcohol abuse in the future.”
