By Ragnar Haagen

New changes to prevent abuse of OxyContin

Feb 29, 2012 | 10:44 AM

Starting tomorrow, the pain management drug OxyContin will be replaced by OxyNeo, a pill with virtually all of the same characteristics but two major differences; its chemical formulation will make it harder to abuse and it won’t be funded by the provincial government.

This comes after a similar move was made in the U.S. in 2010 to curb addicts who would grind up the pills in order to get a heroin-like euphoria from either injecting or snorting the drug.

The new OxyNeo pill has been treated, making it extremely difficult to be broken down.

“You can very easily melt down or dissolve OxyContin and inject it, you can’t do it with (OxyNeo)” said Leo Lanoie, a physician at Prince Albert’s Cooperative Health Center.

“You can hit it with a hammer probably 50 times in order to get it down enough to inject it. It’s just a very hard pill that breaks down in big chunks. If you soak it in water, nothing happens, it does something called hydrogelling. It becomes this really sticky goo and so people who snort it hate it because it actually obstructs their nostrils. Instead of it turning into this powder that is absorbed, it turns into a paste.”

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Rather than continue to fund this highly addictive drug, Saskatchewan has decided that OxyNeo will now be listed under the “exception drug status” program, effective today. That means cancer or palliative care patients will continue to receive coverage for the drug, but new patients who don’t meet the criteria would be responsible for the full cost.

“For instance, I won’t be able to start a new pain patient on this, unless he’s got cancer, even if the other medications aren’t working for him,” explained Lanoie.

“Oxycontin for me is always the third drug of choice; if morphine doesn’t work, if hydro morphine doesn’t work then I’ll go to OxyContin. I think it’s is a great drug. I treat pain and it’s very useful. And you have to think that maybe five per cent of all people who take OxyContin abuse it, so what per cent of people that take alcohol do you think abuse it?”

Existing patients who have received OxyContin in the three weeks leading up to March 1 will still be eligible for coverage of OxyNeo by the provincial government.

Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia are the latest provinces to put these new restrictions on the coverage of this drug. Ontario is also removing OxyContin and OxyNeo from its drug benefit program in order to prevent skyrocketing addictions and Health Canada has announced it will slowly remove funding of the drug to First Nations patients.

rhaagen@panow.com