Posted August 4, 2005

     The name “OxyContin” conjures up any number of unfortunate pictures – substance abusers hooked on the OxyContin’s active ingredient (Oxycodone), pharmacies being robbed, teenagers stealing to support the use of their fashionable “drug of choice”, and so on.  Unfortunately, there are large germs of truth in all of these pictures.

     There is also another side to OxyContin.  It is a mainstay of long-term chronic pain management.  And pain management is a recognized medical specialty these days, especially now that most of us are living much longer lives than we were just 50 years ago.  OxyContin is virtually a “miracle drug” for people suffering from ailments like incurable spinal problems or terminal cancer.  To these people, OxyContin is a blessing, not a curse.

     South Boston Online is well aware that certain elected officials have proposed legislation to ban OxyContin.  We respectfully disagree.  Why do we say “respectfully”?  Because we know those elected officials are acting in a way they think will help their constituents and our society.  Their intentions are good.

     Yet, we disagree with them, simply because such a ban won’t work.  Street traffic in OxyContin will continue, as it has for every other banned substance in the history of our nation.  Recovery programs work, but our government enforcement efforts (including bans) have failed.  Just examine the record, if you need any confirmation of that statement. 

     Even if an OxyContin ban could somehow be enforced successfully, substance abusers would simply change to another drug of choice – perhaps the cheap, readily available heroin that seems to be flooding into urban neighborhoods these days.

     We also have a deep, philosophical objection to a government ban on an effective medicine.  Criminal law exists to protect the innocent from the guilty, or in certain cases, to protect the guilty from themselves.  Yes, there are serious drug abuse problems in South Boston and across the nation.  But banning a pain reliever that might help tens of thousand of chronically ill patients is a very bad solution to these problems.  “It is better a thousand guilty go unpunished, than for one innocent person to suffer.”

The government is becoming increasingly active in its attempts to ban various other substances.  These include supplements containing ingredients from the ephedra-ephedrine-pseudoephedrine family, which are used in over-the-counter cough medicines.  The upshot: the majority of us will be denied simple cough remedies, because a few individuals will use them to make methamphetamine.  Like an OxyContin ban, that’s not only unworkable, it’s unfair.

     The problems with painkillers like OxyContin are not with the substance itself.  The problems are with a “leaky” distribution system in the pharmaceutical industry, with over-prescribing by medical doctors who ought to know better, and with adults who don’t keep potentially addictive medicines under lock and key.  No ban will eliminate, or even reduce, those problems.  By creating an artificial scarcity of OxyContin, a ban will make the abuse problem much worse, while penalizing a large number of  innocent sufferers at the same time.  That is unfair and unworkable.