Narcotic painkillers have become a serious problem due to their abuse potential and adverse health effects. But one narcotic stands out above the rest for its meteoric rise in popularity—followed by an equally impressive dive into disfavor.OxyContin is a narcotic drug, manufactured by Purdue Pharma, and has been described as the “most dramatically successful” of the opioid drugs. If the measure of success is its marketing campaign, then Oxy definitely takes the gold.

The Canadian documentary “OxyContin: Time Bomb” tells the story of how Purdue Pharma steamrolled its way into the marketplace with this dangerous drug, preying on vulnerable pain sufferers and the physicians trying to help them.

Canada is spending more than 10 billion dollars a year on narcotic pain pills—and hundreds of millions more on the addictions they cause. However, Americans may have them beat.

According to the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s pain pills. Misleading pain statistics are used to push increasingly stronger narcotics into the marketplace.

Since OxyContin was introduced in 1996, Canada has recorded the second-highest number of prescription opioid painkiller addictions and the world’s second-highest death rate from overdoses. In the US, narcotic overdose deaths now surpass deaths from murders and fatal car accidents.

The Tiny Time-Released Time Bomb

As soon as it was released, Purdue Pharma hailed OxyContin as its new “miracle pill” for pain sufferers. Drug company representatives told physicians and patients OxyContin was safer than other narcotics because it was time-released, so there was essentially no potential for abuse—but nothing could’ve been farther from the truth.

OxyContin is the time-released version of oxycodone, which is the active drug in painkillers such as Percodan and Percocet. Tolerance builds quickly, so many OxyContin users need ever-increasing doses for the same effect. When their dose “maxes out,” some desperate patients turn to the streets.

Just a few years after its introduction, OxyContin was one of the hottest street drugs available, with addicts chewing or snorting or injecting them for an incomparable—and very dangerous—high, which users compare to heroin.

In fact, OxyContin has been found to be the gateway drug to heroin. Over the past five years, heroin deaths have increased by 45 percent—an increase largely blamed on the rise of addictive prescription drugs such as OxyContin.

Because of its insatiable demand, some patients with legal prescriptions begin selling OxyContin tablets to drug dealers for a profit. The pharmaceutical company earned billions while watching their “miracle drug” turn ordinary citizens into hardened addicts and criminals.

How many people have died as a result of OxyContin? A firm number is difficult to ascertain. A variety of numbers have appeared in media reports, usually lacking citations or references, and many deaths involve a combination of drugs and alcohol.

What is known is that narcotic overdose deaths have quadrupled in the last decade. Deaths from overdoses of drugs like hydrocodone (Vicodin), morphine, and oxycodone/OxyContin rose from 1.4 per 100,000 in 1999 to 5.4 per 100,000 in 2011.

In 2009, 1.2 million emergency department visits involved the “nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals or dietary stimulants” (which includes abuse). Oxycodone alone or in combination with other drugs accounted for 175,949 of those visits.