'Poor man's heroin' found in more deaths on O'ahu
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Health Writer
A new drug on Honolulu streets called "poor man's heroin" has been found in an alarming number of cases in the city morgue, the chief medical examiner said.
The number of deaths in which traces of OxyContin were found increased from six in 2000 to at least 17 in 2001, Honolulu's chief medical examiner, Dr. Kanthi von Guenthner, told the city's Planning and Public Safety Committee yesterday. Three more cases are awaiting test results, which could raise last year's figures to 20.
"OxyContin is the newest drug craze," von Guenthner said later.
It is a prescription medication, used to ease pain in cancer patients and others, but some have found they can inject, snort or chew the crushed tablets to get a fast heroin-type effect. Users can buy the drug on the street for about $1 a gram, von Guenthner said, with the drug coming in 80-milligram tablets. The street price for heroin in Hawai'i is $200 to $250 a gram, according to the Honolulu Police Department.
OxyContin has an effect that's similar to heroin, said Maj. Darryl Perry of the Police Department's Narcotics/Vice Division. "It's a painkiller. It depresses the central nervous system; you're lethargic, there's a different sense of reality, everything is OK, everything is fine. You don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to worry about your kids, your family."
Although the department is not yet specifically targeting the drug, Perry said officers were put on the alert since a recent theft on the East Coast where thousands of the pills were stolen.
"Just by general observation, the people that are more inclined to use it are older, in their 40s and into their 50s and they tend to be — and I don't want to be racially insensitive here — Caucasians, and they tend to be male rather than female," he said.
The cause of death was available for 15 of the 17 recorded cases. Of those, 12 were attributed to an overdose, although the majority of those victims also tested positive for other drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methampetamine. In seven cases, the victims had legally been prescribed OxyContin.
"Unlike in 2000 and 1999, we had OxyContin deaths in combination with other street drugs, which we didn't have before," von Guenthner said. "So after it started on the Mainland, which was the latter part of 2000, we started seeing it as a drug of abuse, not just for medication purposes."
"Physicians should be aware that this drug is being abused in combination with other street drugs," she added.
Von Guenthner also is concerned by the increase in methamphetamine-related deaths that rose from 35 in 2000 to 56 in 2001. Already this year, the medical examiner has seen three more cases.
Von Guenthner also briefed the committee on her office's work in identifying the eight bodies recovered from the sunken wreck of the Japanese fisheries training vessel Ehime Maru. She described how extensive planning helped when timely verification of the bodies' identifies cut short the waiting by victims' families. She and her staff worked through the nights to identify the bodies through dental comparisons.
"A lot of our staff volunteered their time," she said. "The city did not have to pay any overtime."
Reach Alice Keesing at akeesing@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.
Correction: The drug OxyContin is available in 80-milligram tablets, according to Honolulu's chief medical examiner. A previous version of this story stqted an incorrect amount.
