An OxyContin That Addicts Can’t Abuse?
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // April 28th, 2008 // 11:16 am
Purdue Pharma, which makes the controversial painkiller, is racing to introduce a tamper-resistant version ahead of three other drugmakers that are developing their own versions with rival technologies designed to prevent abuse, Bloomberg News writes.
Next week, an FDA panel will meet to review Purdue’s new OxyContin formula, which is supposed to prevent someone from crushing the pill or dissolving it in alcohol to release several hours of narcotics at once. Last year, OxyContin generated more than $1 billion in sales, a market that Pain Therapeutics, Alpharma and Elite Pharmaceuticals hope to grab with their own tamper-free meds.
“This is clearly a defensive move by Purdue recognizing that their OxyContin franchise is in danger,” E. Russell McAllister, an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford, tells Bloomberg. “All the drugs coming down the pipeline are better than what’s on the market, and presumably the new OxyContin formula.”
The FDA panel meets, by the way, nearly a year to the day after the drugmaker and three former and current execs pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to criminal charges for misleading regulators, doctors and consumers about the addictive risks of Oxycontin.
Purdue hasn’t disclosed how its new OxyContin technology works or how effective it has been in studies. A review of pending patents suggests the pill has “rubbery characteristics” to prevent tampering and may release no more than a quarter of its active ingredient when dissolved in ethanol, according to an investor note written last month by Corey Davis, a Natixis Bleichroeder analyst, Bloomberg writes.
Paul
Good for them
The Medical Quack: An OxyContin That Addicts Can’t Abuse?
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M Helm, MD
The chemistry skills of the drug abusing population should never be underestimated. In my state, there are any number of folks who may have barely graduated from high school who can literally make gt 99% pure product from things like household drain cleaner and pseudephedrine.
If we could only get them working on biofuels from cellulose…
Sam
To M Helm, MD
You are correct. As a Director of Pharmacy in a psych hospital I was called one
day by the local police dept and asked what is in embalming fluid? I was
able to tell them and asked, why do you ask? The police said they found a
couple of teenagers going to the back of a funeral home and collecting small
amounts of the fluid left in thrown out containers. The police found out that
the kids would get a small baking tin, fill it with tobacco and soak the tobacco
with the embalming fluid and bake the tobacco in an oven. Then the kids
would roll the treated tobacco into cigarette papers and smoke it.
Purdue may of taken a couple of years to develop this new form of Oxycontin,
but I am sure it will take drug abusers just a couple of months to get around
it.
Allen
What was the point of that little “embalming fluid” anecdote (urban legend, actually)? What psychoactive chemical were the kids after? Something that would come out of solution and precipitate on tobacco - then could be combusted, yielding smoke containing enough active ingredient for adequate pulmonary absorption…?
What was the point of your posting? Just wondering….