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People looking for energy throughout the day tend to do better with the sustained-release dextroamphetamine tablets, Hanson said, rather than people looking for an immediate effect.

Sustained-release technology “further reduces the incidence of addiction,” reads a Mundipharma PowerPoint slide staff said was still in use last year.

But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s, when pharmaceutical companies introduced new opioid-based products — and, in particular, OxyContin, a sustained-release formulation of a decades-old medication called oxycodone, manufactured by Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut — that such prescriptions surged and the use of opioids to treat chronic pain became widespread.

That’s all the more reason for BWC to stop covering new OxyContin prescriptions effective June 1, when it will switch to a sustained-release version of oxycodone that is less susceptible to addiction.

Humans usually don’t experience the same withdrawal because they take sustained-release formulations and taper off opioids gradually.