OxyContin crackdown raises physician, patient concerns

Doctors struggle to treat patients without drawing the ire of the Drug Enforcement Agency or state medical boards.

By Tanya Albert and Damon Adams, AMNews staff. June 25, 2001.

OxyContin, a timed-release painkiller introduced in 1995, has been a miracle drug for people with severe pain. But it also has become an illicit street drug, and the ramifications of a crackdown on its street abuse are causing some doctors to think twice about prescribing the pill.

Doctors, especially in states where OxyContin diversion is a big problem, fear they will lose their license or face federal investigation into their prescribing habits.

Licensing boards say few doctors have lost their license over OxyContin so far, but they are getting the word out to doctors to closely follow pain management guidelines to avoid being caught in the web of enforcement actions surrounding the drug, oxycodone hydrochloride controlled-release tablets made by Purdue Pharma. Meanwhile, doctors are still worried.

"They're afraid the DEA will march into their office and cause them grief," said Edward David, MD, chair of the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine. "If you do a good job and document what you're doing, [boards] have no problem with opioids."

Doctors' fears began after OxyContin made a splash on the cover of Newsweek this spring. It has since been the subject of countless stories in newspapers and on television that focus on its diversion to a street drug that can be crushed and snorted, or dissolved and injected, giving the user a powerful high and sometimes causing death. Eastern states, including Kentucky, Maine, Maryland and Florida, have been hardest hit by the epidemic. [...]

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