Commission recommends solutions to stemming OxyContin, heroin addiction in Massachusetts

Commission recommends solutions to stemming OxyContin, heroin addiction in Massachusetts

BOSTON — Calling addiction to opiates a bigger epidemic than swine flu, the Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission pressed for new educational and preventive programs to stem the flow of illegal prescription pills in the state.

"Massachusetts has a silent public health epidemic on our hands," said state Sen. Steven A. Tolman, D-Boston, chairman of the 13-member commission, during a Statehouse press conference.

Comprising state lawmakers, health professionals and law enforcement officials, the Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission was established in 2008 to investigate the impact of opiate addictions in communities and to offer solutions.

The commission released its report Thursday after more than 30 hours of oral testimony and thousands of pages of written testimony garnered from eight public hearings this year across the state.

The commission's 71-page report includes 20 recommendations that propose overhauling the state's prescription monitoring program, training medical professionals who prescribe painkillers, instituting new drug awareness programs in schools, and diverting first-time, non-violent offenders into treatment rather than jails.

The report also recommends using official state, tamper-resistant, prescription pads for controlled substances, funding "recovery high schools" for addicted teenagers, cracking down on illegal prescription drug activity over the Internet, and passing "good Samaritan" legislation to provide limited immunity for witnesses of drug overdoses.

Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless, a commission member, called for greater oversight over the pharmaceutical industry and suggested that physicians be certified to dispense drugs such as OxyContin.

"We need to consider opiate medications to be poison," Capeless said. "It has legitimate uses, but it is still poison."

In extensive detail, the report highlights the difficulties addicts' relatives, police officers, judges, addiction counselors, emergency medical personnel and others have experienced since the Federal Drug Administration approved OxyContin as a painkiller in 1995.

OxyContin has become so widely abused that the addiction rate for the drug in Massachusetts increased by 950 percent over the past 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"OxyContin went from something that didn't exist to something that was gobbled up pretty quickly because of the potency of the medication," said Raymond V. Tamasi, president and CEO of Gosnold on Cape Cod, which provides mental health and substance counseling.

Almost molecularly identical to heroin, officials say OxyContin serves as a natural transition to the street drug.

"OxyContin is not just a gateway to heroin, it's a rocket ship to heroin," Tolman said.

"In the world of opiates, the leap to heroin is not that big a leap," said Tamasi, adding that the percentage of patients admitted to Gosnold over the past decade for addiction to opiates has grown from 10 percent to 35 percent.

"What we're seeing now is more people starting their experimentation with drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin and prescription medications," Tamasi said.

More people also are dying from overdosing on heroin and OxyContin.

Between 2002 and 2007, 3,265 people in Massachusetts died of opiate-related overdoses, officials said. By comparison, Massachusetts lost 78 soldiers in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during that time.

In New Bedford, at least 15 people have died of heroin overdoses in the last two years.

Citing the high incidence of overdoses and use in the area, the state Department of Public Health in 2007 selected the Seven Hills Behavioral Center of New Bedford to administer Narcan, a drug used to reverse heroin overdoses.

"Opiate abuse, if not the biggest, is one of the biggest problems that faces not just Bristol County but the country as a whole," said Gregg Miliote, spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney's Office.

Carl Alves, coordinator of New Bedford's Pathways Opiate Overdose Prevention Coalition, said closer monitoring of prescription drugs is critical to preventing abuse and the spillover of painkillers like OxyContin into the black market.

"When people complete their medicine regimen, they should really find some ways to dispose of those medications, not leaving them lying around," said Alves, who agreed with the commission's emphasis on education and jail diversion.

"Treatment is far less expensive than incarceration," he said.