OxyCon Game: Anatomy of a Media-made Drug Scare. The author contends that the sensationalistic media coverage is untrue and irredeemably besmirches the image of a drug acknowledged as a major breakthrough in the treatment of debilitating pain. He says that “experts” deny that abuse of the drug outpaces growth in legitimate prescribed usage and that its illegal use is only a problem where “the usual street drugs” are not available. Well, I’m sorry, but this is typical muckraking journalism, and it’s confused and inaccurate. As someone observing from the front lines of the treatment of substance abuse, I can assure you how prevalent abuse of OxyContin has become in the past eighteen to twenty four months… among prescribed users who are better at scamming doctors to get it than doctors are in recognizing a con or saying no when they recognize it. The “dual diagnosis” patients we see with substance abuse and personality disorders or mood disorders, to listen to them, have the worst migraine headaches imaginable, or the most persistent lower back pain after their wokplace injury or motor vehicle accident, or insist they need their Oxy for dental pain or the dull, subjective ache of fibromyalgia, with a frequency far in excess of epidemiological data on the co-occurrence of these conditions.

Ridiculing concern by likening it to the ’30’s film Reefer Madness, as is done here, is the worst sort of ignorant yellow journalism.While War on Drugs hysteria may fuel publicity about the latest drug menace, that doesn’t mean there is not an epidemic of abuse. And you can expect one any time there’s a major therapeutic advance in pain management. AlterNet