Facts from www.oxyconned.com

[lostparent]

- Sales of OxyContin in 1996: $25 million.
- OxyContin related emergency room visits in 1996: 100
- Sales of OxyContin in 2004: $1.9 billion.
- OxyContin related emergency room visits in 2003: 15,000.
- Increase since 1994 in the number of people nationwide needing emergency medical help for OxyContin use:  352%
- Percentage of high school seniors nationwide who reported using OxyContin illicitly during the past year. 4.5%
- Number of OxyContin units sold in 2003: 6,598,000
- Percentage of Purdue Pharma annual revenues attributed to OxyContin: 75%
- Opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 1990: 94.
- Opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2001: 487.
- Deaths linked to OxyContin by medical examiners between 2000 and 2002: 464
- Percentage of addicts admitted to Tennessee clinics for OxyContin addiction in 2001: 21%
- Percentage of addicts admitted to Tennessee clinics for OxyContin addiction in 2003: 62%
- Increase in teen admissions to St. Elizabeth's Addiction program in Boston for OxyContin addiction: 760%
- Percentage of OxyContin addicts nationwide who began their addictions with a prescription from their doctor: 56%
- Number of OxyContin prescriptions written in 2003: 7,000,000
- Rank of the state of Maine in population: 39
- Rank of the state of Maine in oxycodone consumption: 7
- Number of times a single doctor in Washington billed Medicaid for office visits to prescribe OxyContin: 10,473
- Amount the Florida Medicaid program paid a single doctor for illegal OxyContin prescriptions in 2003: $69,400
- Number of OxyContin pills per month one Tennessee patient was prescribed: 1000, or one pill every 44 minutes.

[petroglyph54]

I would appreciate your input, this will come in pieces as evertime I get a paragraph[again] typed I lose my internet and have to start all over. I read you somewhere say that addiction to oxy is the user's fault, and for thousands [maybe millions] it is a great drug to help alleviate unbearable pain and give quality of life to people[like me] who wouldn't otherwise have freedom to even leave the house, do to pain. I'm gonna send and take up further, ok? Frank

[GA Guy]

It's nobody's fault but mine that I'm an addict. If I didn't take Oxycontin, I would have found my addiction in the bottom of a bottle of alcohol or another substance. The fact is that Oxycontin, when used correctly and responsibly, helps millions of people with chronic pain live normal lives. It's selfish addictive thinking that makes my addiction more important than their quality of life.

[problemboyfriend]

Why is this stuff legal??? My addicted boyfriend thinks that they put stuff in there to make it even more addictive. It seems to target the kind of discomfort you hate the most, and gives you more of it when you try to quit. I wouldn't be surprised.

[trying2helpU]

Wow.  I've always known that the numbers were mind-boggling, but having a lot of them together in 1 post... that's just scary.  It doesn't take a genius to see that this problem is increasing EXPONENTIALLY.
Then again, as long as Purdue is making a lot of money and paying their taxes, who cares right?  Sigh, just keep paying off those lawsuits from the money you're printing in the basement, I mean from the pills you're making in the lab.