Question 4: Drug diversion is nothing new. Is OxyContin just the latest drug that's getting a lot of media attention?

Raymond Sinatra, MD: Commander Burke, drug diversion is nothing new. I mean OxyContin is getting all these headlines and everything ... is this a unique drug that has more addiction potential than the others or is this just the latest drug that's getting a lot of media attention?

Commander John Burke: I think you bring up an excellent point. Number one is hydrocodone is for many, many years ... certainly from the start that I became involved in early 1990 ... has been the number one prescription drug of abuse in this country and still continues to be very significantly. As most of you know, OxyContin has been kind of a phenomenon that's occurred in pockets in the United States. It hasn't really struck any of the larger cities, certainly started in Maine and Virginia and West Virginia and some in Ohio and Kentucky. And what brought this to the forefront was in January when there was what I consider a very good investigation where 200 folks I believe in total were arrested, mostly for selling these drugs and other drugs in southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia area. Which I need to add and tell you that those areas have long been hot beds of prescription drug abuse, long before OxyContin was ever placed on the market, those places were hot beds for that and will continue to be I would imagine, unfortunately.

But what's happened is that hydrocodone, like I said, continues to keep that, and what happened was when those arrests occurred, unfortunately they occurred in very late January and the fact of the matter is that February is sweeps month for the media and this ended up catching a lot of fire and of course caught on fire and went out of control I think in the month of February and still continues somewhat today. And yes, I think it is ... I think that it's certainly a drug that's being abused in certain areas, there's no question about that. It's being snorted, it's being injected and it's even being chewed to get that ... to bypass that ... you know, delivery system that legitimate patients take.

So I think it's unfortunate ... the other thing the media's done unfortunately is I believe that those maybe that are naive on how to take OxyContin illegally have certainly learned it by seeing a vast amount of media blitz on this. If you didn't know how to abuse OxyContin before you certainly know now unfortunately. I also want to go on record on the case ... quote a couple of other folks have said ... that I certainly personally am not in favor of OxyContin being taken off the market or being reduced in its current quota.