Meth vs. oxy

Only weeks after the news release, Hutchinson was in front of a congressional subcommittee with a very different message about OxyContin and Purdue.

The company’s “very aggressive marketing and promotion” was tied to the “extraordinary and disproportionate abuse” of the drug, he said.

Hutchinson’s uneasy feeling about OxyContin had started months earlier, he told the subcommittee, when he came to believe OxyContin was “a looming battleship on the radar screen.”

But it was Hutchinson’s comments in the industry-friendly joint statement, not his subsequent concerns about OxyContin, that were used by OxyContin supporters in congressional hearings.

Hutchinson told The Post that he cannot recall what prompted the unusual joint statement, or what role Giuliani’s lobbying of Purdue and Purdue-backed organizations might have played in creating it.

“This was 15 years ago, and I do not have the historical records to assist in the specific questions,” said Hutchinson in a written statement.

“However, during my time as DEA administrator, our primary focus was on combating the rampant use of methamphetamines across the United States.”

In fact, meth was a scourge, demanding the attention of law enforcement nationwide. However, in 2002, the year after DEA’s joint statement, deaths linked to the group of drugs that includes meth numbered only about 1,000.

But drugs involving the group of drugs including OxyContin and its active ingredient, oxycodone, claimed 4,416 lives.

“Notwithstanding my nationwide emphasis on meth abuse, the DEA did pursue prescription diversion and abuse, as well,” Hutchinson said.

Curbing OxyContin trafficking was increasingly politically fraught, though. And the headwinds the agency faced included an unlikely source: law enforcement.

Friends in high places

A state’s attorney general likely would be the point person for any statewide prosecution involving misleading OxyContin marketing.

In 2005, though, most of the country’s attorneys general were not investigating the drug’s marketing.

Most worried that the DEA might discourage doctors from prescribing more of the pills.