- Jim Edwards

The death of Heath Ledger may have a silver lining for drug marketers: The public may finally pay attention to their efforts to dissuade consumers from abusing OTC and prescription medicines.

Medicine abuse is a difficult issue for drug marketers. Most brands rely on "safety" as a distinct part of their equity. Drawing attention to the fact that some people use them in unsafe ways risks contaminating that equity, even if the intent is to safeguard consumers' health. A U.C. San Diego study published in July found that Ledger was not alone. Deaths from medicine misuse totaled 224,355 between 1983 and 2004—more than deaths for illegal drugs—and rose 350% in that time.

But as Bill Pearse, a spokesperson for McNeil Consumer Healthcare said, "There's very little we can say on illicit use. We can only comment on appropriate use."

Several OTC pharmaceutical companies, including Schering-Plough, maker of Coricidin, and McNeil, maker of Sudafed, have funded an effort through the Consumer Healthcare Products Assn. to educate families about how to prevent their teens from using cough medicines to get high. The effort includes several Web sites and PSAs stemming from StopMedicineAbuse.org.

Specialty makers of prescription painkillers are going a step further. Starting later this year they're preparing to launch a wave of abuse-deterrent and tamper-resistant painkiller brands. Among the new entrants:

• Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn., is developing a version of its addictive painkiller pill, OxyContin, that cannot be crushed into powder or dissolved for use as an injection, both methods that addicts prefer.

• King Pharmaceutical in Bristol, Tenn. and Pain Therapeutics in San Mateo, Calif. jointly filed in June for permission to launch Remoxy, a version of OxyContin in which the active ingredient, oxycodone, is encased in a gel that prevents it from being crushed.

• King also is working with Acura Pharmaceutical in Palatine, Ill., on Acurox, in which oxycodone is mixed with niacin, which gives users "flushing, itching, sweating and/or chills, [and a] headache" if they swallow too many.

While most of those launches will focus on doctors, painkiller companies also have started targeting parents and teens with general warnings about medicine abuse.

Abbott Labs, which makes Vicodin, has spent "hundreds of thousands to date" in researching and creating a Web site, NotInMyHouse.com. The site advises parents on how to make sure their kids aren't stealing their pills. Jeff Haas, Abbott's general manager of neuroscience, said the site was launched this summer in conjunction with the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Haas said he wanted to launch the effort when he realized that teens think these drugs are safe to use because they're approved by the FDA and that parents have no idea they're doing it. "You have baby sitters over and you think about the liquor cabinet. But you don't think about the medicine cabinet." One in five teens reports abusing Rx drugs, Haas said.

Purdue, which saw three executives convicted of falsely marketing OxyContin as less addictive than it really is, has more ground to make up than most in terms of its corporate image. It now funds community outreach groups, including the PDFA, and produces information packs for doctors on how to spot the signs of addiction, according to Jim Heins, a senior director at Purdue.

The moves are not without their controversies. Some of the new abuse-proof pills face opposition from an unlikely source: Wall Street. In a June 30 note to investors, analysts at BioLogic Investment Research and Consulting wrote that Acura's Acurox pill would be a "revenue deterrent" rather than an abuse deterrent because doctors would shy away from the niacin-rash side effect. BioLogic also poured scorn on Purdue's new OxyContin version.

On the OTC side, there are plenty of parents who think that Coricidin should be taken off drugstore shelves and placed behind the checkout counter, just as Sudafed was in 2007, to prevent it from being bought and turned it into crystal meth. Schering spokesperson Julie Lux said, "some retail stores have elected to limit the quantities sold" to customers.

The Schering-backed Consumer Healthcare Products Assn. supports a bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., which would ban Coricidin sales to anyone under 18.