Login
Subscribe
Purdue Pharma’s aggressive promotion of Oxycontin — the first long-acting version of the potent opioid analgesic oxycodone — after the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995 was a major catalyst for the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic in the U.S. that began in the late 1990s.[1],[2] As a result, the company now faces more than 2,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments around the country.[3]
Secret documents held by a Kentucky court that were...
Purdue Pharma’s aggressive promotion of Oxycontin — the first long-acting version of the potent opioid analgesic oxycodone — after the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995 was a major catalyst for the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic in the U.S. that began in the late 1990s.[1],[2] As a result, the company now faces more than 2,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments around the country.[3]
Secret documents held by a Kentucky court that were recently unsealed in response to a 2016 lawsuit filed by the media outlet STAT shed new light on the great lengths to which senior Purdue executives — including members of the billionaire Sackler family who founded and own Purdue — went to downplay the drug’s risks of addiction and abuse.[4]
The unsealed documents obtained by STAT revealed that even before the FDA approved Oxycontin, Purdue brazenly planned to aggressively promote the opioid for noncancer patients with chronic pain, such as pain from osteoarthritis.[5]
For example, in December 1994 Michael Friedman — a Purdue sales and marketing executive who would later become the company’s CEO — sent an internal company memorandum labeled “VERY CONFIDENTIAL” to three members of the Sackler family that boasted “If price [does] not become a significant barrier, market expansion into chronic non-[cancer] pain could lead to the use of OxyContin in the 68.7 million prescription [schedule] III [opioid] market.”[6]
In one particularly damning email chain from January 1997 that was highlighted by STAT, the Purdue sales team informed Dr. Richard Sackler that Merck-Medco, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S., had started to raise concerns with physicians about Oxycontin’s abuse potential in noncancer patients with chronic pain.[7] In response, Sackler pushed back by proposing a plan to downplay Oxycontin’s risks of addiction and abuse.
According to STAT, by the time this email exchange occurred, “Purdue sales representatives were falsely marketing [Oxycontin] to physicians as ‘less addictive and less subject to abuse and diversion,’ according to federal court records — conduct that would lead to Purdue pleading guilty in 2007 for the misleading way it sold OxyContin.”[8]
These new details about Purdue’s efforts to mislead the medical community about Oxycontin’s risks of abuse and addiction highlight the key role that the company played in fueling the opioid overdose epidemic, which claimed nearly 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017.[9] Any final resolution of the thousands of ongoing state and local government lawsuits against Purdue and the Sackler family must result in the complete forfeiture of the ill-gotten billions in profits that came from the illegal marketing of Oxycontin.
References
[1] Meier B. Origins of an epidemic: Purdue Pharma knew its opioids were widely abused. The New York Times. May 29, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid overdose: Understanding the epidemic. December 19, 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[3] Strickler L. Purdue Pharma offers $10-12 billion to settle opioid claims. NBC News. August 27, 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/purdue-pharma-offers-10-12-billion-settle-opioid-claims-n1046526. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[4] Chakradhar S, Ross C. The history of OxyContin, told through unsealed Purdue documents. STAT. December 3, 2019. https://www.statnews.com/2019/12/03/oxycontin-history-told-through-purdue-pharma-documents/. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Friedman M. Interoffice memorandum: Product pipeline and strategy. December 29, 1994. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6562734-01-Purdue-Docs-1-87-94.html. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[7] Ross C. Purdue’s Richard Sackler proposed plan to play down OxyContin risks, and wanted drug maker feared ‘like a tiger,’ files show. STAT. December 2, 2019. https://www.statnews.com/2019/12/02/purdue-richard-sackler-proposed-plan-play-down-oxycontin-risks/. Accessed January 3, 2020.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid overdose: Understanding the epidemic. December 19, 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html. Accessed January 3, 2020.
