SAN DIEGO- In a story I am totally not making up, Zogenix Incorporated is working hard to get more hydrocodone to your customers.
The company soon hopes to market a 50 milligram tablet with no acetaminophen. I swear. That's the equivalent of 10 Vicodin in one pill without any of that pesky Tylenol to slow someone down. Early indications are that the drug, which Zogenix plans to sell under the brand name Zohydro, has the potential to be quite popular.
"If one thing has been consistent in our market research, it's that pharmacy customers are almost universally saying one thing, and that is 'we want more Vicodin'!!" said Zogenix CEO and scumbag Roger Hawley in a fictitious interview. "The demand is almost universal, reaching across all regions, social classes, ethnic groups, and even the occasional pain sufferer. So we have developed an innovative new way to get consumers what they are craving. With the dose limiting effects of acetaminophen gone, there is literally no limit to the potential use of this profit....I mean, product!!"
Early contenders for the street name of Zohydro include Supervics, Turbonorcs, Zoes, Hydros, and Yellow Death, pending final determination of the tablet color.
"I particularly like that it's a prescription product" said 63 year old Winthrop Van Drusen from his summer home in Greenwich, Connecticut. "It makes it quite convenient to obtain a safe, pure supply of narcotic to meet my needs by simply browbeating a doctor, my social inferior, into writing a prescription."
Asked about concerns Zohydro will end up simply feeding the nation's large and growing demand for narcotics, Hawley, who will never spend a goddamn day in jail, didn't say "I think the key is to build on the lessons learned with the marketing of Oxycontin, and expand on the innovative ways they have addressed these type of problems while still meeting the needs of those in chronic pain."
Deaths from narcotic overdose have more than tripled since Oxycontin came to the market in 1995, and more people now die from prescription drug misuse than in traffic accidents. A fact Hawley doesn't seem to give a fuck about.
"I wish they's hurry up and get this shit out" said drug dealer and occasional user Juan Ventimillia outside a Philadelphia housing project. "My muthafuckin customers keep riding my ass for more and more Vics, and I thought I had the problem solved when I started scoring Norco instead, but shit, it's to the point now where I gots to carry so many goddamn pills around I sound like a goddamn shorty rattle every time I move. I'm hoping the new shit will save me some space. You know what I'm sayin?"
Street level dealers such as Juan face a mandatory 5 year federal prison sentence in the United States if they sell crack, while CEO's who peddle bullshit like Zohydro generally get to retire quite wealthy. That is why most guidance counselors recommend obtaining a degree in business before embarking on a career of getting people hooked.
Asked for comment outside his Florida radio studio, Rush Limbaugh didn't seem to hear the question. Probably because he's gone deaf again.
22 comments:
I personally am all for selling narcotics in as high a dosage as is technically possible while still allowing the pill to be swallowed.
Think about it: if Rush could have got 50, or 100, or 1000mg hydrocodones while nobody was keeping an eye on him, we wouldn't have to listen to his carping any more, now would we?
Megadose narcotics would be like chlorine in the gene pool. All clean!
thanks for sharing, great post as usual.
I for one am glad to see that my friends who are hooked won't have to take ten pills anymore!
P. S. Viewing your blog on mobile devices I get white background, kinda digging it.
It's all just because those pussies at the FDA won't let Zogenix sell etorphine labeled for human use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etorphine
No more pesky acetaminophen holding us back. Now I won't have to type "Max 5 tabs per day" even when Dr's insist that 1-2 q 4-6 h is perfectly acceptable for Vicodin ES.
Nobody bothers to report much that 40K+ ER visits each year from APAP overdoses... estimated 50% ARE NOT accidental. What else is not reported much is that AT LEAST 50% of drug overdose deaths are SUICIDES. Here is information http://healthblog.steveariens.com/?p=296
that medical examiners if they can't find another health reason for a person's death... and drugs are involved.. it is ACCIDENTAL.
You have been drinking too much - too long of the DEA's Kool-Aid. the vast majority of people that abuse substances .. have underlying mental health issues and are self-medicating their "demons"
When we - as a society -become as self-righteous about alcohol & tobacco addictions.. I will join the choir ..until then I refuse to be a hypocrite
I am sure the CEO of Walgreen's is excited about this. When are the going to legalize heroin for medical use.
Always glad to get an update. my apologies for the lack of penetrating sociocultural criticism.
Im sending my readers over to you today!
Wait...are there any legitimate uses for this? Surely anyone with pain severe enough to need this much medication is going to be getting IV pain management?
I have seen opinions to the effect that trying to commit suicide with APAP OTC pain pills is really something like this: "I don't want to die, but I need help and I want everybody to know it. I'll take all these pills and say it was a suicide attempt but everybody knows Tylenol(R) isn't really dangerous." I hasten to add that this chain of thought isn't necessarily conscious - a person could really be suffering emotionally, but a subconscious survival instinct directs them to "overdose" on what they think are harmless OTC meds.
However, by the time they start feeling bad, their liver is fried, and the fake suicide attempt becomes a very successful slow-motion suicide. I'm not a doctor or an RPH, but it seems like a reasonable theory.
OTOH, I know somebody who took an entire bottle of Tylenol(R) at once, and just had an upset tummy for a day or so. My understanding is that it certainly should have killed him. (That was his intent.) Humans are amazing creatures.
I love you, Drug Monkey!
absolutely genius. love the post haha
Anonymous said...
Wait...are there any legitimate uses for this? Surely anyone with pain severe enough to need this much medication is going to be getting IV pain management?
Besides being Anonymous... IMO .. you are clueless about pain management.
Can't wait till the LOL junkies at the nursing home hear about this! You'll be able to hear a pin drop in that place.
Yeah yeah, blame the corporate boogeyman if it makes you feel better.
Let's ignore those who are actually responsible for growing prescription drug abuse: the most educated, well-connected and highest paid healthcare professionals--the prescribers. Those poor impressionable, quick-with-the-pen doctors and their svengali-like enslavement to (egads...!) Big Pharma!
Let's talk out of one side of our mouth about the de-criminalization of drugs and the right-wing's failed "War on Drugs".
Then let's complain bitterly out of the other side when legal options for pain management are expanded as if it where part of some grand capitalist conspiracy.
You are way off on this one DM.
Investigative stories are always quite interesting from a pharmacist standpoint. Am always in a hurry at the grocery checkout to read the full details in Enquirer, but perhaps it'd be an enlightening light reading before dozing off to hear about Elorac, Inc. and its product Durasal, topical salicylic acid which the FDA is alerting us to avoid confusing with the antiinflammatory eyedrop Durezol. Durasal is available prescription-only but not FDA-approved, and a bulwark (big money maker for the company that gained exclusivity to ... cis-isomer to doxepin we occasionally compounded as anti-itch cream before skin hydration was standard therapy. Remember preps? My little ointment pot of salicylic acid, I was so proud, I sent it home to mother. Elorac has come up with a 27.5% cream for warts. And, now, they have orphan drug patent from FDA for naloxone lotion used for itching of mycosis fungoides (every hear of the itching of mycosis fungoides--something awful, I hear...its Phase II trials show the product is better than the vehicle at relieving it.) Maybe DM is too young to have compounded with LCD, well now, Elorac has its own Avenues to Access for reimbursement for 1.2% anthralin 'rapid-release' cream. Works fast agains plaque, but isn't as messy as LCD.
Fifty milligrams of hydrocodone all in one pill sounds like a 'get rich' scheme on par with 'me-too' generic brand companies, and availability of cis- and levo-isomers marketed so that the strength of the dose can be listed as half that of the mixed isomer. When we could do with a few more alternatives to medications for senility, schizophrenia, ... but there is no drug for stupidity or bamboozlety.
I'm just glad for that it will create more jobs for those wishing to go into the armoured car driver business in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Patricia
50 mgs of hydrocodone?!? I'm no pharmacist, just an RN, but a 10X strength tab would make me leery to pass it out. I HATE to be the person who hands a patient the pills that makes him stop breathing, even if a doctor HAS ordered it.
Any word on whether they can be ground up and injected? Or maybe mixed with other substances and smoked, the way the CIA found out to do with cocaine so they could start the crack epidemic and finance their covert genocides in Central America and South Central Los Angeles?
We're still carrying around more than 200 Vicodins that my wife got a scrip for before we immigrated to Australia. (We were amongst the few left-wingers who actually DID move out of the country because of the Bush war crime regime.) We knew the Aussies were tight-arse with their DD's (dangerous drugs) and she has chronic back pain. Unfortunately, the vikes upset her stomach and have the paradoxical effect of making her speedy, so she will only take one if the house needs cleaning. More than five years later (we escaped the States in 2006) and two trips across the Pacific, they still work.
Now I know the reason America is falling apart.......Bukko left. Yes, its all clear now. America needs more people like Bukko. Citizens who trade fight for flight.
How will America continue to survive without citizens like Bukko? Residents who flee when things arnt going their way. Every strong democratic society is built on their like.
If every American resident who disliked their nations policies tucked tail & fled to Australia we would be so much better off.
Way to make a stand Bukko! Stay strong, and above all.....STAY THERE.
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