Allegations Against the Maker of OxyContin Are Piling Up. Here ’s What They Could Mean for the Billionaire Family Behind Purdue Pharma

Executives from Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin, admitted in federal court in 2007 that Purdue’s marketing practices and interactions with doctors had understated the strength and addictive potential of the drug — an omission that many experts believe contributed to an opioid epidemic that claimed nearly 50,000 American lives in 2017 alone. But on Thursday, the release of a previously sealed deposition from 2015 showed that Purdue executives knew of OxyContin’s strength long before that $600 million settlement. The deposition, which had been filed in court, revealed that Dr. Richard Sackler — part of the family that founded and controls Purdue, and who has served as Purdue’s president and co-chairman of the board — knew as early as 1997 that OxyContin was much stronger than morphine, but chose not to share that knowledge with doctors. “We are well aware of the view held by many physicians that oxycodone [the active ingredient in OxyContin] is weaker than morphine. I do not plan to do anything about that,” Purdue’s head of sales and marketing, Michael Friedman, wrote in an email to Sackler, according to the deposition, which was obtained by ProPublica and co-published with STAT. “I agree with you,” Sackler wrote back. “Is there a general agreement, or are there some holdouts?” The document’s publication comes just weeks after the release of an unreda...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Drugs healthytime onetime Source Type: news