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worry about addiction, so the
medical community was taught to
believe that addiction to opiates
was relatively rare,” said Andrew
Kolodny, the director of Physicians
for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.
The pitch was convincing,
Kolodny said, because no doctor wants to believe that they’re
keeping a patient in pain unnecessarily. By 2001, OxyContin had
exceeded more than $1 billion in
sales, and by 2003, nearly half of
the doctors prescribing OxyContin
were primary care physicians, according to a 2004 report from the
Government Accountability Office.
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
“As prescriptions began to
take off, it led to an epidemic of
opioid addiction,” Kolodny said.
“We all became much more likely
to have opioids in our homes, so
it created a hazard.”
“We have now this incredibly unusual public health crisis
that’s essentially caused by physicians, caused by the health care
industry,” said Meldon Kahan,
the medical director of substance
use services at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.
In 2007, Purdue and three of its
top executives pleaded guilty to
misleading doctors, regulators and
patients about OxyContin’s risk
of addiction. The company agreed
to pay more than $600 million
“Buck,” who
is 23 and
addicted
to heroin,
shoots up
Suboxone, a
maintenance
drug for
opioid
dependence
that is
also highly
addictive.