I have my own thoughts on how this is effecting heroin use. There is no doubt in my mind that the reformulation of these pills and the tightening of prescribing has caused an increase in heroin use, but I also think that it's giving dope dealers a free pass on being able to sell inferior product. When the original OxyContin was still around for cheap, you could always tell your dope dealer to fuck off if his product didn't make it cost efficient over oxy. Now that there are less pills around and they are more expensive, we don't have that to hold over their head as much. I remember a few years back when one of my dope dealers had a shitty product and roxis were still cheap I explained to him that the whole appeal of dope was that it was cheaper than pharmies, so if his product was shitty then I would just stick to pills.
Also, with all these people switching to dope after the OxyContin and now Opana was reformulated, there are a lot of new customers that don't know what good dope is. A couple of years ago if you wanted weight in dope in NY you had to cop in the city, but since it became so popular the dealers have started to run mills in the suburbs on LI and elsewhere, so now you can cop weight just about anywhere, but the quality and quantity is not the same as the original bags from the city. That's when all of these blank unstamped bags started surfacing compared to years ago when everything was stamped and taped. That's also why you hear of so many people not being able to get great dope all the time. Sure there are still consistent dope dealers around, but now that there are so many dope dealers, you have to look a bit harder to find the good stuff. There are probably 4 shitty dealers for every 1 good dealer now since the influx in the popularity of dope, whereas as little as 3 years ago there were so many more consistent dealers. I've known people that only had shitty connects, and I had to warn them to be careful when going through a new connect because bag for bag the new connects dope may be twice as strong as the shittier ones.
Fuck David Laffer! Seriously, who shoots up a pharmacy for vicodin?!?!? Then a few months later there was that other murder from a pharmacy robbery gone bad, and I think that just recently there was another one in the city. I knew right after the Laffer guy shot that pharmacy up that they were going to crack down on pain doctors a lot, but I wasn't expecting it to be this rediculous.
I have a friend here in NY that is a legitimate pain patient (with proof from MRIs and everything) that had one of his scripts for 90 15mg morphine pills completely discontinued over two months, and the other script for 120 percocet reduced to 90 the follwing month. The doctors are definitely too paranoid now. If a patient has all the proper documents to confirm that their condition warrants narcotics, then the doctors should not have to worry. It's the patients that had no MRIs and would just complain about pain and get scripts for it that are the ones that should be cut off first.
Also, with all these people switching to dope after the OxyContin and now Opana was reformulated, there are a lot of new customers that don't know what good dope is. A couple of years ago if you wanted weight in dope in NY you had to cop in the city, but since it became so popular the dealers have started to run mills in the suburbs on LI and elsewhere, so now you can cop weight just about anywhere, but the quality and quantity is not the same as the original bags from the city. That's when all of these blank unstamped bags started surfacing compared to years ago when everything was stamped and taped. That's also why you hear of so many people not being able to get great dope all the time. Sure there are still consistent dope dealers around, but now that there are so many dope dealers, you have to look a bit harder to find the good stuff. There are probably 4 shitty dealers for every 1 good dealer now since the influx in the popularity of dope, whereas as little as 3 years ago there were so many more consistent dealers. I've known people that only had shitty connects, and I had to warn them to be careful when going through a new connect because bag for bag the new connects dope may be twice as strong as the shittier ones.
Fuck David Laffer! Seriously, who shoots up a pharmacy for vicodin?!?!? Then a few months later there was that other murder from a pharmacy robbery gone bad, and I think that just recently there was another one in the city. I knew right after the Laffer guy shot that pharmacy up that they were going to crack down on pain doctors a lot, but I wasn't expecting it to be this rediculous.
I have a friend here in NY that is a legitimate pain patient (with proof from MRIs and everything) that had one of his scripts for 90 15mg morphine pills completely discontinued over two months, and the other script for 120 percocet reduced to 90 the follwing month. The doctors are definitely too paranoid now. If a patient has all the proper documents to confirm that their condition warrants narcotics, then the doctors should not have to worry. It's the patients that had no MRIs and would just complain about pain and get scripts for it that are the ones that should be cut off first.
