PIKEVILLE, Ky. – The robber asked for only one thing when he walked into a pharmacy with a mask over his head and an automatic rifle in his hands: OxyContin.

The prescription drug, meant to be a painkiller for cancer patients, is being abused throughout the East, authorities say. In Kentucky, about 200 people were arrested and charged this week in what police say was the largest drug raid in state history. All had allegedly been using or dealing OxyContin.

“They’ll kick a bag of cocaine out of the way to get to ‘Oxy,”‘ Detective Roger Hall of the Harlan County sheriff’s department in Kentucky said this week.

Over the past two years, the drug has become popular in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Maine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

Just Thursday, authorities said that at least 28 people in Virginia had died from overdoses of OxyContin in the past two years, and medical officials said that number would easily double as coroners examine another 100 deaths.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Famularo, who helped lead the Kentucky bust, said he has studied autopsy reports and determined that the drug has caused 59 deaths in Kentucky alone.

The company that manufactures OxyContin disputes Famularo’s figures.

“Even one death from abuse is a tragedy. My concern is that numbers sometimes take on a life of their own in a situation like this,” said Dr. J. David Haddox, senior medical director for health policy at Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn. “I’ve not seen any data that those numbers are anywhere close to accurate.”

Famularo said people have been crushing the pills into powder and snorting it, or injecting it to get a euphoric high similar to that of heroin. It sells on the illegal drug market for up to $100 a pill.

In Tuesday’s drug roundup, police charged a nurse with stealing OxyContin from her hospital, said Capt. Danny Webb of the Kentucky State Police in Hazard. Webb said another suspect worked in a doctor’s office and allegedly called in prescriptions for OxyContin to pharmacies. Her husband would then pick up the pills, police said.

In Ohio, two doctors were arrested recently in connection with OxyContin prescriptions. In Maine last year, 11 people were accused of obtaining OxyContin by forging prescriptions.

The drug has led to an increase in crime in eastern Kentucky, said Hazard Police Chief Rod Maggard. He estimated 90 percent of the thefts and burglaries in Hazard are to get money to buy more pills.

In a detox center in Ashland, about 75 percent of the patients treated over the past 18 months have used OxyContin, said Bill Stewart, a supervisor for the regional mental health agency.

OxyContin’s withdrawal symptoms, Stewart said, involve nausea, diarrhea and severe stomach cramps. “People very much want to go back to use again, instead of suffering through withdrawal,” Stewart said.