In response to a recent article by the Los Angeles Times focusing on the popular opioid painkiller, OxyContin, Boston Magazine interviewed local doctors to get their thoughts on the drug.

The L.A. Times piece focused on how OxyContin stops being effective after eight hours, and not after 12, which is what’s advertised. According to Dr. Andrew Kowal, director of the Division of Pain Medicine at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, the information is not necessarily new to doctors.

However, Dr. Kowal believes that they use of OxyContin may be on the way out.

“I try to help patients lower their dose or get off opioids completely,” he says. “Patients now want to get off the medications because they read about all of this. In general, there’s a trend to go away from it, and slowly but surely, that will probably happen.”

To read more, please visit Boston Magazine.