Dear Editor,

In 2001, over a 10 month period, I was legally prescribed three thousand, seven hundred, and forty six (3,746) Oxycontin pills, 240mg per day for back problems. These tiny, little, not much bigger than a pin head, pills, almost killed me and ruined my once happy, successful, normal life. I have not been able to return to that life, before Oxycontin.

It sent me to an abyss of hell that emotionally and physically robbed me of everything I stood for, practiced, and believed in. The doctor who prescribed this poison was grossly incompetent and ultimately abandoned me to swing in the wind, as I tried to get help from anyone who could assist me.

Even though Purdue Pharma was well aware of the problems it's product was causing in this country, they refused to do anything at the time when so much tragedy, including my own, could have been avoided. Consequently, I got a doctor, who was "sold" on the drug and didn't know what he was doing.

Consequently, while I refused this drug, I endured more doctors, who at the time, were still "sold" on the drug.. Consequently, I was misdiagnosed over and over for months, while Purdue played the cover up game. Consequently, I lost my job, my health care, and my once hard -earned future plans, not to mention my loyal faith in the medical profession.

Research produces documents, which show Purdue's insidious plans, and brilliant market strategy aimed at a target of unqualified, trusting doctors and agencies. As obscene profits reeled in, saturated areas of these pills overflowed on to our streets, inevitably causing addiction, overdose, and death, for legal as well as illegal users.

To counter the media reports and regulating agencies, Purdue systematically claimed shock and pointed their fingers at "street addicts, drug abusers, and a handful of disreputable Doctors", all, they claimed, did not use the product according to directions. Their mantra always included their commitment to the so called 50 million chronic pain sufferers, who were in desperate need of this drug.

They kept secret from the desperate, imploring, enforcement agencies seeking assistance for the residual crime effect, the very tool, which would have pinpointed the major sources for these outbreaks, locked up in a cabinet back in Connecticut, employed more importantly as a powerful marketing aid.
 
The death and destruction on this scale is unprecedented in Pharmaceutical history.  Purdue should not be allowed to do business in this country. Chronic Pain patients, like myself,  have the right to get adequate relief from their suffering from trained and educated professionals.

They have the right to expect that they will receive treatment, care, diagnosis, and relief from their suffering based on sound medical research, testing, and conclusions. Not pie in the sky acclamations, manipulated statistics, glossy projections, and fancy footwork.

We, the reported realities, dead or alive, who have suffered through the trials of this fiasco are now the TRUE statistics of the study, which should have been done in the first place by the medical community. Truth be known, unwillingly, we the VICTIMS, will be the "research" numbers, people will now use, before ingesting OR dispensing this drug.

Regulate the dangerous drug Oxycontin, with a class of it's own, and accordingly never do business with Purdue Pharma again. Then take a good, hard, look at the Pain Management Industry, as well as the medical community's requirements for narcotic dispensing.

BETTS T.
Lombard, Illinois

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