People who abuse pain pills sometimes crush or dissolve them, then snort or inject the drug so that it enters the bloodstream more quickly than if it were swallowed whole. That provides what a government Web site calls “a quick, powerful high .” The FDA just approved Embeda, a King Pharma drug that was specifically designed to thwart this sort of thing, and the mechanism it uses is pretty interesting. Morphine (the active ingredient) is wrapped around a core made up of a drug called naltrexone, which blocks the effects of morphine. If you swallow the pill whole, your body absorbs the morphine while the naltrexone passes through your system with no effect. But if you crush it up or dissolve it, the naltrexone gets mixed in with the morphine

and prevents the drug from working. Clever, sure, but does it work? “It’s an advance, but it’s a small advance,” a member of an FDA panel that reviewed the drug last year told Dow Jones Newswires . “We didn’t hear anything about potential for chewing or snorting or heating it or cooking it.” The company cites a clinical trial in which recreational drug users had “reduced drug liking and euphoria” when Embeda was “crushed and taken orally,” as compared with an equivalent dose of an immediate-release morphine solution. But, the company adds, there is no evidence that adding naltrexone to the drug means it will be less likely to be abused. Photo: iStockphoto

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How to Build a Narcotic that Resists Abuse (Maybe)