OxyContin maker: Pills seized in C.B. weren’t the real deal

From the Halifax Chronicle Herald:
Representatives of the company that makes the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin flew to Sydney on Thursday to examine a vast quantity of seized pills that turned out to be knock-offs.

Police in Cape Breton seized 25,000 oxycodone tablets from a vehicle at a parking lot last week in what is considered the biggest bust of its kind in Atlantic Canada.

Staff Sgt. Paul Jobe said police are now confident the drugs, which have an estimated street value of about $700,000, are not of pharmaceutical grade.

Investigators met with drug-makers Purdue Pharma at police headquarters in Sydney where the company made a presentation on their manufacturing and security systems.

"It’s not the same quality they would produce," said Jobe. "They have a coating they put on their pills, they have a stamp they put on their pills, there’s a (certain) way they produce them."

The U.S.-based pharmaceutical company operates a facility in Pickering, Ont., and is the only maker of the brand OxyContin in Canada. There are eight other manufacturers of its generic form oxycodone, though none deal with the high milligram content found on the pills that were seized. ...more