Pharmaceutical companies to move to prove the abuse of prescription painkillers may inadvertently promote heroin use, a new study found.
More than 2500 people, the study found a 17% decline in OxyContin abuse with opioid dependence, with a formula in 2010, it is difficult to inhaled or injected arrived. During the same period, the abuse of heroin doubled.
Theodore Cicero, professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis published the study's lead author, said: "I think we have to have unintended consequences and unintended consequences from this news, these new formula today in the New England Journal of Medicine. "Drug abuse is like a balloon: if you click in one place, it raised another."
Unlike its predecessor, the deterrent effect of OxyContin abuse version into the gel crushing, making it harder to people to scoff at, or injection of fast high. Nearly a quarter of the study, found around making adjustments, 66 percent of respondents said that they switch to another opioid drugs - usually heroin.
"Most people I know do not use OxyContin," one participant said, according to the study. "They have been transferred to heroin because it is easier to use, cheaper and easily accessible."
A small bag of heroin - a high enough - can cost only $ 5, according to Cicero. 80 mg dose of OxyContin, on the other hand, can spend up to $ 80 in the street, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
"The reason is that if we reduce the supply, will reduce demand, Cicero said:" the country's efforts to restrict access to prescription painkillers, and to minimize the potential for abuse. "But we see there is still demand, driving drug procurement."
Different, potentially more dangerous, that is. OxyContin dose, and engraved on the pill, heroin powder is usually cut with other chemicals to enhance the profits of dealers.
Cicero said: "When people switch, they do not really know what they want". "They do not know the dose or purity, so that the excess has become quite common."
OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma said in a statement, "It is unreasonable to expect a re-pharmaceutical companies a drug, would reduce overall opioid abuse, and the contrary, these data indicate that, as time goes on into the abuse deterrent properties all re-opioid drugs may help to reduce the overall of this class of drugs abuse. "
H. Willie Clark, an abuse of the director of drug treatment centers, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Authority, said, reflect the use of opioid-dependent people turn to heroin, prescription painkillers challenges.
"Our belief is that these coordinated and comprehensive efforts to reduce prescription drug abuse have had an impact now, we should be concerned about the unintended consequences," he said.
By raising public awareness and to combat illegal drug use, Clark would like to see the downtick in prescription drug abuse did not rise in heroin use.
"We should not attempt to solve a problem by creating another," he said.


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