Pubdate: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 Source: CNN (US Web) Show: CNN Tonight Section: News, Domestic Copyright: 2001 Cable News Network, Inc. Contact: http://www.cnn.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/65 Anchor: Bill Hemmer Correspondent: Bill Delaney OXYCONTIN CREATES CONTROVERSY AMONG USERS AND PHARMACIES Some people with chronic pain have to lean on powerful prescription drugs just to get through the day. Life can be unbearable without them. In tonight's cover story, CNN's Bill Delaney on how legitimate drug users may have to go without, because of drug abusers. BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Some people with chronic pain have to lean on powerful prescription drugs just to get through the day. Life can be unbearable without them. In tonight's cover story, CNN's Bill Delaney on how legitimate drug users may have to go without, because of drug abusers. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One of at least 37 robberies of the painkiller OxyContin in just the past six months in Massachusetts. Amid a crime wave in several states -- Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maine -- thefts of a drug some say can cause a high like heroin. Stigmatizing the pill, Tom Cabral says doesn't make him high, but did make his life worth living again. Dulling severe pain he'd endured for more than seven years in the wake of a car accident. TOM CABRAL, USES OXYCONTIN: It changed my outlook on life. The OxyContin helps me get through the day with, you know, as minimal pain as possible. Without feeling that, you know, I'm getting my gut kicked in every time I walk. DELANEY: What Tom Cabral and millions of other chronic pain sufferers now fear, OxyContin-related crime making the prescription drug harder to get because of abusers like Scott Barrett who says he became addicted. SCOTT BARRETT, ADDICT: I would take, you know, four or five, depending on the milligrams at once, and chew them up. You know, you get 60 or 80 milligrams of this stuff, it's pretty potent. DELANEY: Lost, says Tom Cabral, amid allegations that the drug can even be deadly in high enough doses, is that he's experienced only pain relief, not a high when he swallows, not chews, two time- released, 20-milligram pills, three times a day, as he has for three years. CABRAL: I'm not, you know, strung out. I don't jones when I don't have them. You know, I don't get high off of them. I take them as I'm prescribed. DELANEY: Taking them as prescribed, though, is getting more difficult. (on camera): Shaw's supermarkets here in the Massachusetts area, which include 52 pharmacies, no longer stock OxyContin after two robberies in Maine and one in Boston. (voice-over): Since pharmacies are required by state law to provide all legal drugs, Shaw's says it will offer OxyContin but only to customers who prearrange a time-specific pickup. BERNARD ROGEN, SHAW'S SUPERMARKETS: We just don't want to carry surpluses in the store at any time. DELANEY: Confronting the fact that though retail OxyContin can cost as little as $50 a bottle, black market OxyContin can cost as much as $1,000 a bottle. Crime, now discouraging some doctors from prescribing it. JAMES HINES, PURDUE PHARMA: We already know that certain patients in some sectors of the country are starting to suffer because of the attention on the abuse of OxyContin. DELANEY: What worries millions like Tom Cabral. CABRAL: It puts a stigma on us like we're the bad people. I can't go tell someone "Oh, I, you know, I take OxyContin." because the first thing they'll think of is all the negative image, the heroin high, the heroin high? DELANEY: Sufferers of severe pain say the only high is simply not feeling so agonizingly low. Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston. (END VIDEOTAPE)