Across the country, people are talking about the dangers of a prescription painkiller known on the street as Oxy. The federal government wants the drug maker to limit distribution and marketing.
Officials say it has played a role in scores of fatal overdoses.
And Florida medical examiners report that the narcotic, OxyContin, has joined other morphinelike drugs to kill 152 people in a recent six-month period. Yet OxyContin, approved for the market in 1995 and now prescribed millions of times a year to ease chronic pain, is barely making waves in the Tampa Bay area. Despite two recent area deaths being investigated as Oxy overdoses, law enforcement, social service workers and emergency room physicians say they are not seeing a spike in regional abuse cases. And Oxy isn't making much of a splash on local streets, either. And we're constantly monitoring,'' said Lt.