Citation

King S. Int. J. Drug Policy 2014; 25(3): 486-493.

Affiliation

School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen's University, 28 Division Street, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada. Electronic address: kingsj@queensu.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.12.016

PMID

24612641

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In the past decade, OxyContin diversion and misusehave been firmly established in Ontarian public discourse as serious problems requiring major intervention.This article contextualizes and theorizesthe processes through which the marketing of the prescription opioid and its subsequent problematization occurred. Theanalysis refuses the impossible choice between the 'deserving pain patient' and the 'undeserving addict,' between the war on pain and the war on drugs, and between a notion of OxyContin as either miracle panacea or destructive poison. Rather than falling in step with these binaries, OxyContinis theorized across them, or multiply, with the aim of moving beyond established moral and theoretical registers for exploring embodied consumption. METHODS: This discursive study is based on a broad range of texts collected between 2009-2013: Hansard reports from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario; newspaper, magazine, and internet coverage of OxyContin; and policy documents, research reports, and position papers and news releases produced by government agencies, advocacy organizations, professional bodies, think tanks, tribal councils, and law enforcement agencies. RESULTS: Pharmaceutical industry and state actors have attempted to dualistically parse disparate materializations of OxyContin, a tactic that intensified as media pressure helped produce the notion of a public health crisis and, implicitly, a crisis of welfare dependence. By focusing on the (impossible) task of stratifying proper from improper use, the drug's advocatessought to secure the integrity of opioid painkillers and to protect their materialization as vehicles for maintaining a body that is normal, stable, and in control, as opposed to a body of excess that threatens to expose the consumerist logic of contemporary medicine. CONCLUSION: Attempts to contain the multiplicity of OxyContin result in the further entrenchment of privatized and individualized approaches to pain and painkilling and serve to undermine rather than secure public health and safety.

Language: en