TAXES FUND DRUG ABUSE

PUBLIC PAY FOR ADDICTS RORT

This exclusive story by the Daily Telegraph investigative journalists Janet Fif-Yeomans and Kelvin Bissett appeared on Monday, October 27, edition of the Telegraph.

The painkiller oxycodone, heavily subsidised by taxpayers, has overtaken heroin as the most popular drug in the Kings Cross injecting room as evidence emerges of a booming black market.

About 8,200 of 17,971 drug injections in the room used the tablet painkiller, dubbed “hillbilly heroin.”  In comparison, just 6,110 injections during the same June quarter period involved heroin, figures obtained by the Daily Telegraph reveal.

Medicare Australia figures show taxpayers paid $53.2 million in 2007-08 to subsidise 1.63 million scripts through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Seven years ago, in the 2000-01 period, the cost to taxpayers was just $8.5 million for 441,389 scripts.

The drug, a morphine derivative, is available with PBS subsidy to treat severe, disabling pain commonly felt by cancer patients and high level back or tooth ache.

The growing use of oxycodone in the injecting room triggered by the heroin drought was an accurate sample of drug trends in the wider community, experts said last night.  Tablets were almost certainly obtained through doctor shopping, the practice of attending numerous doctors with fake symptoms to access the drug for personal use or dealing.

Doctor’s prescriptions for oxycodone have exploded in recent years, with an undetermined amount of it now finding its way on the black market, as has occurred in the US.  It is dubbed “hillbilly heroin” because it is widely used by poorer residents in parts of the US.

The figures on use in the injecting room were contained in the June quarterly report for the facility, released under Freedom of Information laws.

There is now so much oxycodone in the injecting room that staff hand out filters to users to screen talc and other binding agents as addicts prepare the oral tablet for injection.

Oxycodone is the generic name for the drug available under a number of names, usually Oxy Contin, Oxy Norm or Endone or even in suppository form branded Proladone.

Tablets that cost $1.50 over the counter sell for more than $50 on the black market and drug squad commander Superintendent Greig Newbury said its illegal use was an unprecedented problem.

James Pitts, chief executive officer of the rehabilitation organisation Odyssey House said there had been a significant increase in the numbers of people seeking help for addiction to oxycodone.

He put the reason down to a heroin drought and because the drug was available from doctors.  “It is a slow-release morphine derivative and people probably have their own particular doctors who prescribe it or they shop around at different doctors,” Mr Pitt said.  “It is not uncommon to forgo prescriptions.  People will steal prescription pads.”

On the same day this article was published the Daily Telegraph published the following Editorial.  Taxpayers $53 m habit

Every week more than 600 drug addicts without terminal disease or diagnosed chronic pain go to the Kings Cross injecting room to shoot up with a painkilling drug that is being subsidised to the extent of $53 million by taxpayers.

The drug the addicts are using oxycodone, is a powerful opioid analgesic listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to ease the pain suffered by the chronically or terminally ill.

Oxycodone accounts for nearly half of the drugs used in the injecting centre, coming from almost nil two years ago.

Addicts see it as a cheap alternative to heroin now that the heroin drought has made that drug widely unaffordable.

However for some inexplicable reason, authorities don’t seem to be especially alarmed.  Few charges have been laid for trafficking in oxycodone and there is little evidence of medical tribunals taking aim at health professionals being careless or even unethical in their dealings.

More than 1.6 million prescriptions for oxycodone were written last year, costing taxpayers $53 million.  No one knows how much of this is ending up on the black market, but it’s reasonable to assume, based on the injecting room figures, that it’s a fair chunk.  There is a good chance that organised fraud is going on.

This is an insult to taxpayers, a slight on the chronically ill who need the medication and a rebuff to those desperate for new drugs to be approved by the PBS.

Editors note:  I don’t want to argue the merits or otherwise of the Kings Cross injecting room.  But what I will Argue is, that the Kings Cross injecting rooms licence to operate is unconstitutional and is illegal under Federal law.  Therefore the NSW Labor Government, the NSW Police commissioner Andrew Scipione, the Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty and the Australian Customs are all guilty of committing Federal indictable offences under the Australian Customs Act.  What amazes me is how the Australian Media have failed to expose these breaches.

I would like to ask the reason Why:

Section 232. Collusive Seizures.

a)         Whoever: being an Officer of Customs or Police makes any agreement not to seize goods liable to forfeiture shall be guilty of an indictable offence and shall be liable to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding 5 years was deleted by the Howard Liberal-National Coalition in May 2001.  One could be forgiven for suspecting that the Coalition Howard Government may have deleted this act to protect the major drug cartels and doing this was rewarded with financial donations to their party’s slush fund.

For facts click on – Update February 2008 Part Two (the Law And You)