10 July 2019 - PHARMAC has spent tens of millions of dollars funding a painkiller at the centre of the American opioid crisis. Experts say it has created a whole new population of drug users. 

Oxycodone, known by its brand name OxyContin or more colloquially as 'Hillbilly Heroin', was meant to be an alternative for people who didn't tolerate morphine.

Instead, statistics uncovered by Stuff reveal morphine use edged upwards while prescribing of oxycodone took off.

Between 2005, when PHARMAC began funding oxycodone, to the 2011-2012 financial year, the number of times the drug was prescribed climbed from 9,607 to 185,884 - a jump of more than 1,800%.

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