If it were a person, the painkiller OxyContin would likely be on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.

After little more than seven years on the market, OxyContin has gone from a $25-million-a-year drug to sales of $1.9 billion last year and in the process has turned dozens of physicians into criminals for overprescribing the highly addictive substance; killed children who stumbled upon it by accident; led teen-agers to suicide; and destroyed the lives of thousands of unsuspecting average Americans who fell prey to the drug's powerful pull after being legally prescribed it for chronic pain.

Those who know OxyContin consider it a dangerous drug linked to the ruined lives and deaths of hundreds of Americans across the nation. But the questions about "Oxy" don't end with the numbers, they continue into the way the drug was sold to doctors and to the government. And one of the more pressing questions is what can be done.

Some of the numbers are truly astounding. Oxycontin-related emergency room mentions have skyrocketed from 100 in 1996 to almost 15,000 last year and we can guess not everyone showing up at the ER is eager to confess to an oxy connection. The drug is known to have killed 59 Kentuckians, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal and has been linked to 200 deaths in Florida, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that 57 North Carolina residents died from OxyContin in the last three years.

Dave Miner, a former Utah police officer, is just one of fallen. He died in May from an apparent overdose of Oxy. No one knows if Miner's addiction to OxyContin caused him to commit suicide, or if like so many others, he died from an accidental overdose.

One thing is certain: OxyContin turned a good man into an addict, then a statistic. "He was such a nice guy, very sharp, very glib, very knowledgeable, very capable," said Harrisville Police Chief Max Jackson, who worked with Miner for years. "This is one of the worst travesties I can think of. The thing that's so tragic here is how (addiction) can take over someone's life."

Addiction Reaching Epidemic Proportions

Too many lives have been taken over. Interestingly enough, no single federal or private-sector agency tracks the harm caused by the drug, anecdotal evidence suggests that OxyContin addiction has reached epidemic status. In Tennessee, the media has reported that 62% of addicts admitted to treatment centers cite OxyContin as their drug of choice, up from 21% just two years ago. At one treatment center for teens in Massachusetts, OxyContin addiction admissions are up 760%. We can guess these trends are repeated across the United States.

Ernesto Williams, the former mayor of a small Texas oil town, knows the evil Oxy can do. Williams, a native of Falfurrias, Texas, lived an exemplary life until OxyContin grabbed him by the throat. A minor slip and fall at work in 1995, led to an OxyContin prescription, then addiction and finally pleas for help. Before he found salvation, OxyContin turned Williams from a community leader into a recluse, a ruffian and a potential suicide.

"I did not want to visit people," he said of his days on OxyContin. "I did not want to visit anyone. I did not attend family gatherings. I did not open Christmas presents. I was pissed off all the time and wanted to be alone. I got into a fight with my wife, because she would not give the drug to me. I was highly withdrawn from my family. I was gone, like I did not exist."

He considered suicide and blew up at his wife, shoving her to the ground. "I started going to church and praying and I asked for help from God," he said. "I started praying every day. I'd go every day to pray for an hour or two, asking God to help me."

He dreamed of suicide, of people chasing him, of his hand reaching for a gun during seven days at a detox center. But he survived. "I just woke up," he explained of the rehab experience. "First thing I did was hug my wife and kids and decided to never take this medication again... I didn't know anything about it at first. To me it was just a medication prescribed by the doctor. Now I've learned that it is highly addictive and called 'hillbilly heroin.' It's a dangerous drug."

A "Blockbuster"

Designed to ease the agonizing pain of cancer patients, OxyContin has become a so-called "blockbuster drug" with prescription sales of nearly $1.9 billion a year. OxyContin is the most frequently prescribed brand-name pain narcotic, according to a report by the U. S. General Accounting Office. Oxy prescriptions have skyrocketed in recent years from 316,786 to more than 7 million.

It's more popular than Viagra. And nearly 56 percent of those who become addicted to OxyContin get their first dose legally from their doctor.

Others obtain prescriptions illegally by deceiving doctors or finding unscrupulous ones. Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh is under investigation in Florida for alleged "doctor shopping," a practice encouraged by Purdue Pharma in a marketing video that tells patients to keep looking for a doctor who will prescribe OxyContin if their current doctor will not.

But many addicts don't have to shop at all. One Tennessee addict found a doctor who prescribed him more than 1000 pills a month, that's one dose every 44 minutes for a legitimate user. Another physician in Washington billed the state Medicaid program 10,473 times for illegal OxyContin prescriptions. In Florida, a single doctor bilked the state Medicaid program out of $694,000 in a one year period.

Addiction and Abuse Fueled By Aggressive Marketing Campaign

Several authorities familiar with the growing epidemic say Purdue helped fuel the drug craze through the company's aggressive and highly successful $500 million marketing campaign. U.S Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) has called Oxy a scourge, while speaking on the floor of the House this month. He also said the drug company is not without blame.

"OxyContin has caused countless deaths from overdose and toxicity," he said. "Equally important, however, OxyContin has caused thousands of individuals lawfully prescribed the drug to become addicted, causing a wide variety of destructiveness and in many instances ruining the lives of innocent people.

"... Over the last six years, OxyContin has amassed sales of more than $10 billion as a result of overly aggressive, inappropriate and, unfortunately for our citizens, highly effective marketing... Misinformation about the addictiveness of this drug did not help the pain patient," he added. "Instead, it took advantage of the very condition that this drug was supposed to help."

Misleading Marketing

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration warned Purdue about its marketing style. "Your journal advertisements are misleading because they make prominent claims of effectiveness for pain relief, but omit from the body of advertisements crucial facts related to the serious, potentially fatal safety risks associated with the risks of OxyContin to be abused, and the limitations on its appropriate indicated use," the letter stated.

Former DEA Drug Czar Asa Hutchinson told Congress in 2001 that, "the disproportionate abuse of OxyContin is due, in part, to aggressive marketing and promotion by Purdue Pharma, who represented the product as having a lower abuse potential than other opiate pain relievers. Purdue Pharma accentuated the problem by suggesting that physicians prescribe OxyContin as a substitute for a variety of less addictive existing medications."

Rock Bottom for Addicts, The Bottom Line For Purdue

Those who worked for Purdue say profits were pushed over medical prudence. "The company was all about the bottom dollar. Sell OxyContin. Period," Karen White, a former Purdue sales representative told ABC News last October. A former Purdue sales manager in West Virginia said that detailers were instructed to say that OxyContin was "virtually non-addictingit's not right, but that's what they told us to say."

By 1998, the company's sales force stood at 625, twice the number before Purdue produced Oxy only a few years earlier, according to the book "Pain Killer, A Wonder Drugs Trail of Addiction and Death." The company plied physicians with free trips to high-priced resort seminars in Arizona, California and Florida. The meetings had one key agenda: spread the word that pain was under-treated and doctors needed to address that vacuum by aggressively prescribing drugs like OxyContin, according to "Pain Killer."

Selling the drug was the top priority for Purdue and by last year, 75% of the company's revenues came from OxyContin. Recovering Oxy addicts like Chris Czarnocki of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., blame the drug maker for their troubles.

"They knew the side effects and still they stuck it out on the markets," said Czarnocki, who got hooked after being prescribed OxyContin following an injury. "They said it was non-addictive. They knew that if people got on it, the company would make billions of dollars. It's all about money and power. How could you put that out on the street? I'd like to know what possessed them to put OxyContin on the market."

Purdue's Foot Dragging

Government authorities have begun to hear the plight of the addicted and heed the thunder from this gathering storm. Pennsylvania's Attorney General Jerry Pappert has criticized the drug company for failing to do more to reduce the risk of addiction. During a press conference this month, Pappert said Purdue pledged to add a "blocking agent" to its medication to negate the effects it causes when crushed. (Street users frequently crush up the product, then snort it, or cook it into a liquid and inject it to get a dramatic high).

"It's three years later and where are we in the process?" Pappert asked. "If there is a viable way to reformulate the product to prevent people from overdosing, when are we going to see it?" Pappert has also created a statewide investigative unit to crack down on illegal acquisition and distribution of prescription drugs, after Oxy played a part in the deaths of 39 people in the past two years.

In Tennessee, the state general assembly set aside $262,000 to create a control substance database to track how doctors prescribe drugs like OxyContin. A bill is currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress to establish a national database.

West Virginia has sued Purdue Pharma, charging that the company defrauded consumers by pushing the product through "highly coercive and inappropriate tactics," such as marketing the drug as less addictive than others because of its time-release formulation, according to a Court TV report.

"It's amazing," said Steve Annand, an attorney representing the state. "The things they've done were beyond any reasonable marketing for narcotics." According to Annand, Purdue Pharma gave thousands of doctors all-expense paid vacations to help encourage prescriptions. The company also created videos with patient testimonials, which they encouraged physicians to share with their patients.

The 'Big Lie'

Purdue Pharma was so intent on ignoring the addiction potential of OxyContin that it did not include a proper warning on the label — something that is routinely done with other opiates — until it was forced to do so. Incredibly, in a statement that reminds some of the tobacco industry's head-in-the-sand approach for many years, Purdue's senior medical director J. David Haddox has said he has "no credible information that people who take the drug as directed have become addicted," according to the Court TV report.

That claim flies in the face of testimonials from scores of Oxy addicts who say they got hooked by taking the pills as directed. John Sachs, a Purple Heart-winning Vietnam vet, does not buy Purdue's company line. Diagnosed with a neck ailment in 1993, Sachs underwent a variety of pain treatments before a specialist recommended a new drug called OxyContin. "That was when OxyContin was first introduced on the market," he recalled "It was recommended for me. They said it would be more effective than anything else."

They started him out at 10mg tabs twice a day. Before long the dosage got bumped up to 40mg pills three times a day. "It got ridiculous," he said of the Oxy dosages. "My doctor said I'd never get off the medication. I knew I was becoming addicted, but no one would listen to me."

He listened to several physicians, including a pain specialist and his then wife, a nurse. All backed OxyContin. "After hearing this from several doctors, you begin to feel like maybe they are right and you are wrong, so I learn to live with this," he said. "I found myself more and more addicted and not able to function if the meds were out."

Sachs lost his grip on Oxy in the late 90s. "I remember getting up every morning saying, 'Dear God get me off this stuff.' It takes control of your life. It controls you."

The Oxy experience caused more scars than his days in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, where Sachs served as a tank gunner and won a Purple Heart after nearly being blown to bits by an enemy RPG round. "In Vietnam I had some control," Sachs said. "It was horrible, but at least I could dictate what I was doing. But when you are on narcotics like OxyContin, they dictate what you will do."

The Gathering Storm

Sach's war analogy is apt, and unfortunately, the war is only going to get bloodier. A recent Federal court ruling has preliminarily cleared the way for a generic version of OxyContin to hit the market, meaning there will be more sources for the drug at cheaper prices.

In addition, Purdue Pharma is currently developing a new so-called "time release" painkiller called Palladone, a synthetic version of morphine that, if taken intravenously, is six to seven times as strong as OxyContin. Given Purdue Pharma's track record with OxyContin, the battle has only begun.