My late father was addicted to Percocet &#x2F; Percodan for much of his life after being severely wounded in the Korean War and then followed by the prostate cancer that was his ultimate demise.  In the 90s, his doctor switched him to Oxycontin because of its ease of dosage (it&#x27;s hard to remember when you took your last pill when you&#x27;re high). Neither I nor his doctors knew that this 12 hour claim was just so that Purdue could defend its patent, despite the studies (according to this article) that pointed to it lasting far less than 12 hours.<p>Reading this article now helps me to better understand the pain and suffering he endured from these drugs and now give me insight into the lengths he went to for &quot;rescue&quot; medication, which included doctor shopping and paying retail price for more than half of his meds so that his insurance company wouldn&#x27;t report him to the state or DEA (he did get caught eventually).<p>It boggles my mind to think how an industry whose purpose is to help people can become so corrupt and I wonder whether there is any hope of this getting better before it gets much worse. With the mainstream media playing enabler, it&#x27;s doubtful it will ever happen (name the last news broadcast that wasn&#x27;t wrapped end to end in big pharma advertising).