Furious Seasons

July 13, 2009

The Boston Globe Examines Seroquel's Street Drug Status

Last month, I wrote of yet another case of Seroquel's growing popularity as a street drug in connection with the shooting death of a man in Massachusetts and, given how many of these Seroquel as street drug stories were popping up back there, I wondered aloud why no one in the media was taking a look-see at the phenomenon. "Um, hello Boston Globe" is how I put it at the time.

I have no idea whether anyone at the paper reads this site, but today the Globe has an interesting article on the Seroquel as street drug phenomenon in Massachusetts. The take-aways are: it's mostly being used as a sedative in pill form back there; many of those using it that way are recovering addicts or people who were first given the drug in an institutional setting as a sedative; the DEA isn't even tracking the drug's use on the street, which strikes me as naive on the agency's part; the phenomenon is indicative of the wild off-label use of psych meds; and AstraZeneca issued, as you might expect, a stirring defense of its antipsychotic:

"'Unfortunately, drug abuse extends not just to illicit substances, but also to medicines that are safe, effective, and necessary when used according to doctors’ prescriptions and advice,' said Kirsten Evraire, a spokeswoman for the company."

It's "safe, effective, and necessary when used according to doctors’ prescriptions and advice?" Sure, that's why AZ is being sued like crazy for lying about problems with the drug, which turned in revenues of $4.4 billion in 2008.

It's interesting to me that the article didn't get into the matter of people crushing and snorting Seroquel, but perhaps that's more popular elsewhere in the US. The article does contain an error of fact when the reporter writes "Seroquel debuted 12 years ago as a novel drug for adult patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder." When Seroquel hit the world in 1997 it was only approved by the FDA for use in schizophrenia. Its acute mania indication did not come until much later.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at July 13, 2009 08:53 AM

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Comments

Seriously? There is no common street drug more dangerous than neuroleptics. There are some arguably in the same league as them, but the implied idea that they're safer than cannabis, any of the major hallucinogens, cocaine, or heroin bothers the heck out of me, both in the drug war propaganda sense and the extremes of biopsychiatry sense.

This is particularly screwed up in light of the effectiveness cannabinoids might have as antipsychotics. There's way more evidence to back up the claim that cannabis is safer than peanut butter (hint: there's no such thing as cannabis allergy) than there is to back up the safety of neuroleptics over, well, anything else that isn't blatantly poison, and it might even do the job that neuroleptics largely fail at.

I already hate that neuroleptics are used in spite of the many extreme health risks they pose, but the least these pushers could do is acknowledge that their drugs are dangerous. I happen to take issue with "effective" and "necessary" too, but to call them "safe" is really pushing it.

Posted by: Bryan at July 13, 2009 10:33 AM

Just fyi, I passed along your posting about Seroquel as a street drug phenom in MA to my friends (and former co-workers) at The Boston Globe and they ran with it. Keep up the good work!

Alison

Posted by: Alison Bass at July 13, 2009 10:38 AM

I agree, Bryan. I almost choked when my Genetics professor said, "A drug doesn't get past the FDA unless it's safe"

Seroquel is good... when you want a sledgehammer to the brain.

Posted by: kimbriel at July 13, 2009 12:20 PM

Yeah, the main thing I've learned at college is that professors with impressive graduate degrees are fully capable of having questionable beliefs or even being flat out wrong (and don't get me started on "Communications" courses).

It doesn't help that many people not directly involved in debate over biopsychiatry imagine the false binary of modern medical science vs conspiracy theorist hippies. I have to admit I've been guilty of this kind of thinking in other areas where authority is challenged. It's an understandable side to take, which is why abuse of authority is such a dangerous thing.

Posted by: Bryan at July 14, 2009 09:31 AM

Came accoss an article in Nature (extremely prestigious) that proposes a mechanism for addictive properties of antipsychotics back in 2001.

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v25/n3/full/1395680a.html

Posted by: R at July 14, 2009 02:51 PM