The small town of Port St. Lucie, Florida, just north of West Palm Beach, is dealing with a prescription drug abuse problem. City officials recently held a town meeting to warn parents of the dangers of OxyContin abuse. The meeting was called following the death of a 14-year-old boy who overdosed May 27th on the potent painkiller. Anthony DeSantis and a friend broke into a Port St. Lucie home and stole 50 OxyContin pills.

This town meeting is the first of its kind in Florida and was sponsored by Purdue Pharma, OxyContin's manufacturer. Dawn Steinhurst, a local business owner, told the 150 people at the meeting that she observed five of her 16-year-old daughter's friends overdose and die from the drug. She recently enrolled her daughter in a drug treatment program.

Unbelievably, Port St. Lucie has lost nine residents to OxyContin overdoses in 2001.

OxyContin is a time-release synthetic morphine originally developed to ease the chronic pain suffered by cancer patients. The drug is also known by its generic name oxycodone. Originally popular on the black market in Maine, West Virginia and Kentucky, where it was coined the "hillbilly heroin," OxyContin abuse has spread throughout the country.

Motivated by the growing overdose problem and criticism of its marketing practices, Purdue Pharma has halted shipments of the most powerful dose of OxyContin. In addition, in an attempt to prevent forged prescriptions, the company recently distributed tamper-resistant prescription pads to doctors.