This is a story about how smart people are stupid.

In the past, OxyContin was designed to be released into the body’s system slowly, over the course of many hours, meaning each pill contained a large reservoir of oxycodone. Drug users soon discovered by crushing the pills and inhaling them, or dissolving the pills in water and injecting them, they could bypass the slow-release mechanism and get an immediate ‘high.’  …

But in 2010, Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, changed the formula of the opioid drug to make it more difficult to crush and much slower to dissolve, which appears to have made the drug less attractive to users, according Cicero and his colleagues.
The researchers … found that while the new formula has successfully stopped many users from abusing OxyContin, they aren’t abandoning drugs entirely. A significant percentage of former OxyContin users are instead turning to harder drugs, such as heroin and other, stronger opioids.  addicts

via Fox News.

Well what did you think was going to happen?  Let me guess, a bunch of guys in suits (the “C” level suite) and bespectacled scientists (the drug researchers) and — THE GOVERNMENT — think they’re going to stop drug addiction by making it so people cannot get high?

You don’t need a MBA from Booth or a Phd in organic chemistry to know that drugs addicts will move from one drug to another.  So why would Purdue Pharma do this?  Surely they’re selling less Oxy now with the abusers demand subsided.  They spent good R&D money on redesigning the drug to have lower sales.  Why?!

It’s not in this story but I’m willing to gamble dollars to navy beans that Purdue Pharma did this because of a request from the FDA.  Big brother getting into everyone’s business.