Posted on Thu, Dec. 04, 2003
Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, doesn't usually click onto Philly.com - the Web site featuring stories from the Daily News and Inquirer.
But he began clicking onto it recently as part of an investigation he's been conducting into illegal use of OxyContin, a powerful painkiller made by a Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company.
OxyContin abuse was highlighted recently when radio commentator Rush Limbaugh admitted he'd been addicted to it for years, and authories launched an investigation into how he'd been obtaining it.
According to Blumenthal, his investigators were told that searchers could find ads offering OxyContin illegally on Philly.com, as well as the Web sites of the New York Times, USA Today, the Boston Globe and the Miami Herald.
Blumenthal wrote to all the newspapers involved to ask them to do something about this.
"We didn't think the newspapers were purposely threatening the public interest," said Blumenthal. "We thought they weren't aware of it."
Fred Mann, general manager of Philly.com, said he certainly had not been aware of it.
But, it seems, that if someone typed the word OxyContin into the Web site's search engine, links to ads - some of them hyping ways to order the drug online without a prescription - popped up.
However, shortly after Blumenthal sent his letters to the papers, those ads disappeared. Nobody told either Blumenthal or Mann how that had occurred.
"But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that someone was reacting to our letter," Blumenthal said.
In the case of Philly.com, that someone works for Overture Services Inc., a national company that supplies the ads linked to searches on many Web sites.
"We decided to remove all prescription pharmacy drugs from our database," said Jennifer Stephens, spokeswoman for Overture Services.
That, she said, stopped all OxyContin ads. But the company was arranging for a program that would eventually enable legitimate ads to return, she said.
