Former New York Giants Linebacker who began using cocaine as a rookie in the 80's and claimed to have successfully cheated an NFL drug test by using someone else’s clean urine, now finds himself once again facing adversity. The New York Daily News reported that former NFL star Lawrence Taylor was recently taken into custody on a rape charge. Taylor's rash of arrests and charges focusing mostly on drugs and alcohol began in the mid-80's and culminated with his four game suspension in 1988 for violation of NFL rules. Taylor's troubles continued throughout the 90's with incidents ranging from crack busts to arrests for not paying child support to leaving the scene of an accident. Taylor's run in with the law seemed to take lull for a decade until this recent accusation of rape.
The FDA recently voted in favor of pushing a new formulation of oxycodone hydrochloride for approval. The new OxyContin formula is more difficult to crush or dissolve which will hopefully make it harder to be used as a drug of abuse . The FDA recommended that Purdue Pharma's application for a new, resin-coated formulation should replace the original version, which has been on the market since 1996. Randall Flick, MD, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who voted to recommend approval of the drug said, "Clearly the old formulation is worse than the new, although I think the difference is relatively small," Flick concluded, "Hardcore abusers are likely to devise new ways to break down the harder tablet or figure out which solvents will dissolve it fastest, within 'day or weeks' of the product's release on the market."