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NEWS
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pharmacies want to fingerprint
customers who buy OxyContin
;PULASKI, Va. (AP) — Six
pharmacies will soon be able to
ask'customers wanting the pow
erful painkiller OxyContin and
spine other narcotic drugs to
provide their fingerprints.
Police provided the finger
print kits hoping to deter pre
scription fraud. The invisible-
ink prints will be kept at the
pharmacy.
“If we take just one or two bad
bottles off the street a month
then we’ve accomplished a lot,”
said Detective Marshall Dowdy.
Police and pharmacy officials
plan to meet next week to deter
mine when pharmacists would
require the fingerprints, police
said Tuesday.
Hailed as a miracle painkiller
for cancer and chronic-pain pa
tients, OxyContin is widely
abused, especially in Appalachia.
Ground-up pills are snorted or
injected, giving abusers a hero
in-like high.
Since 1998, OxyContin and
oxycodone, the narcotic’s active
ingredient, have been linked to
more than 100 deaths nation
wide.
j. David Haddox, senior
medical director for health pol
icy at Purdue Pharma, Oxy-
Contin’s manufacturer in
Stamford, Conn., said finger
prints would be acceptable if
applied to the purchase of all
comparable drugs.
The fingerprint system, man
ufactured by CrimeBite, also is
Companies
Wednesday, J;
spend mortjj:
on drug ad
used by grocery stores that cash
payroll checks. Company presi
dent Lydia del Rossi said Pulas
ki is the only town she knows of
using it to help fight prescrip
tion fraud.
“Once that fingerprint is
there, it’s hard to say you didn’t
do it,” said Leslie King, the
pharmacist at a Pulaski super
market. “I don’t know if it will
cut down on people who are
using it, but maybe it will make
people realize it is a felony.”
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Major drug makers spend near
ly twice as much to advertise
their medicines than to research
and develop them, says a con
sumer group that blames ag
gressive marketing for soaring
drug prices.
Families USA said Tuesday
that drug makers sometimes
spent three times as much on ads
and compensation for executives
than on research and develop
ment. The group analyzed data
from the Securities and Ex
change Commission, which reg
ulates the stock market.
'The advocates rejected con
tentions by some companies
that the cost of developing new
medicines is causing the escala
tion of prices.
“Pharmaceutical companies
charging skyrocketing drug
prices like to sugarcoat the pain
by saying those prices are need
ed for research and develop
ment,” said Ron Pollack, execu
tive director of Families USA.
Pharmaceutical executives,
however, said the group had
unfairly condemned the indus
try for its success and distorted
the money spent on promoting
new drugs.
“When the pharmaceutical
industry does well, patients do
even better,” saidjackie Cottrell,
a spokeswoman for the Pharma
ceutical Research and Manufac
turers of America, based in
Washington.
Families USA, a frequent
critic of rising drug costs and the
drug industry, based its report
on an analysis of company rev
enues from sales, the net profit
made and the percentage of sales
revenue spent on markera
ministration, research an
velopment. 1 he infora
used came from 2000. P"
' 1 he group examined™
nies it said were amongtr.:(
50 in making drugs for
erlv. Adding drug cover;;
Medicare, a federal prog
the aged and disabled
ajor L
lids at it;
rently a hot political issue with 1 uesil
| Hpens wk
" >ng one-
Ads raise drug chance to s
cost for seniors
jn me seco
A recent study found that drug S |
companies actually pay mpniH »
marketing than they do for res& AITIGI
and development on the SOmsI Most Y;
prescribed drugs to seniors g 0( )IK .
Percent of revenue apentlorwjL
top 50 drugs for seniors in? , ,,
Boone
Marketing, advertising-, player. I le
administration H' > • ,
^■er highs
■tegory w
Merck and Co. Inc.
15%
6%
administration
Research and Develops
nd has
hg at this
Pfizer Inc.
15%
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
30%
11%
Pharmacia Corp.
37S
15%
Abbott Laboratories
21%
to
American Home ProductsCs sational SC
W,
13%
Eli Lilly and Co.
30%
19%
Schering-Plough Corp.
Host unlik
39V Runnct
Kunierez,
tfk Red Sc
by himself
■ Cy You
Hlemens, 1
firm as it is
for this aw
time, Clen
36":
14%
Allergan Inc.
13%
SOURCE: Families USA
[Lartmez i
^al compt
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Huzuki, Se
come a fon
threaten in
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But how c
rookie wht
10 years in
Mexico
Continued from Page 7
! “The message I bring yovi is to think hard
about it,” one of the messages warns. “Don’t take
the risk. People do die at the border; it’s a reality.”
. Another spot warns against using smugglers,
kfiown as “polleros.”
“The polleros, those who traffic in human be
ings, are not your friends. We know they aban-
djon people in the deserts, in the mountains, be
side rivers and they wind up drowning,”
Hernandez says.
' “They have raped girls,” he continues. “Think
Bard about it. Don’t risk it. ... Stay in Mexico.
Seek opportunities here.”
v The Estrella Blanca bus line has agreed to
skew the spots, which run from about 40 to 70
seconds, along with regular feature films on 5,200
buSes in Mexico. The bus company said 350,000
people a month ride the buses. Hernandez said
some bus operators in the United States have of
fered to show the spots as well.
^ Mexicans have continued to attempt illegal
crossings, even though U.S. officials have built
walls to make crossings difficult.
- ^‘My conscience would not let me sleep if I was
dot doing everything possible to save, if neces
sary, one single life,” Hernandez said, noting that
he deals with victims and survivors of border
crossing disasters as part of his job.
Fox and President Bush have also vowed to
work more closely on making the border area
safer. While Mexico is discouraging illegal cross
ings, the U.S. Congress is considering laws that
would let more Mexicans cross legally for tem
porary jobs. ,
One of the videotaped clips urges those who
make the trip to seek the safest, cheapest way to
send money back to their families.
Such remittances — running at a pace of
more than $8 billion a year — are now Mexi
co’s third-largest source of foreign income af
ter oil and tourism.
Another spot notes that AIDS is spreading in
areas of Mexico where large numbers of people
emigrate.
“Citizens are going to the United States,
they are being infected with AIDS and then are
passing it on to their families,” Hernandez says
in the ad, again urging them to stay home and
find work.
Hernandez noted that the government also is
sponsoring other ads on national television dis
couraging illegal border crossings.
, He said the efforts to protect migrants and to
create alternative jobs in Mexico were motivated
in part because “in Mexico, we want to have the
moral authority to be able to demand that our
countrymen are treated well abroad.”
Violence kills
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Backed by heli
copter gunships, soldiers deployed in a troubled
Kingston neighborhood Tuesday, patrolling streets
blocked with debris from days of gunbattles be
tween police and government opponents that have
killed 22 people.
Crouching low with machine gun at the ready,
a trooper passed the body of an elderly man
sprawled face down in a pool of dried blood, ap
parently from a bullet in the back. Residents of
Tivoli Gardens, the besieged neighborhood, said
the man was killed Sunday.
“Anyone who tided to move got shot at. It’s pure
murder from both ends ... the police and die gangs,”
said Claudia McKay, a 2 3-year-old seamstress.
The violence has been concentrated in the cap
ital, Kingston, in southeast Jamaica, though there
have been isolated protests and roadblocks that po
lice quickly dismanded in the nordiern resort towns
of Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.
There were no reports of tourists leaving, hut a
new U.S. travel advisory against western and down
town Kingston raised worries the disturban ces could
hurt Jamaica’s vital $1.3 billion tourism industry.
Prime Minister PJ. Patterson ordered Jamaica’s
entire army—more than 3,000 troops — to deploy
Monday night to reinforce security forces trying to
22 in Jamaica
put down fighting between gangs affiliatedwP
two main political parties.
“The government cannot stand idly by and
low criminal elements to hold this country tor
som,” Patterson said.
On' I iiesday, there was only sporadic fightffl!
ter troops moved in.
“It’s an unpredictable situation ... the polices
the army are maintaining a heavy presence, 1
police spokeswoman Dahjia Garrick.
But the opposition Labor Party says author'
have been targeting only its followers in the®
down launched Saturday. Since then, at least 22 p
pie have been killed, including three police oft
and one soldier. One of die police deaths camel
day when an officer was hit in the head byai
thrown by protesters 40 miles from MontegoE
Correction
In Tuesday's Battalion the Cent
of Management Informatic
Systems should have bet
abbreviated CMIS.
— ■"
American Red Cross
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