OxyContin tended to take patients up to towering daily levels of use. This was particularly true of the high-dose versions—40 mg, 80 mg—in the high quantities that Purdue reps prodded doctors to prescribe. Some doctors then cut off their patients; other patients lost their insurance. Either way, many of those patients migrated to the street market for prescription painkillers, where prices were a dollar per milligram. People habituated to 200 or 300 mg a day could not afford that. So they migrated again—to potent, cheaper heroin from Mexican traffickers, who had awakened to this new market.
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