Recovery of morphine from a controlled-release preparation. A source of opioid abuse.

MS-Contin (Purdue-Fredrick, Norwalk, CT) is a controlled-release preparation of morphine sulfate that has demonstrated efficacy in the management of chronic cancer pain problems. It has recently come to the attention of the authors that MS-Contin represents a potential source of opioid abuse through the extraction and intravenous injection of the morphine from this preparation. The authors describe a simple aqueous extraction method that was used to quantitatively determine the extent to which morphine could be obtained from MS-Contin tablets.