Purdue Pharma Faces $8.3 Billion Settlement For Paying Doctors To Actively Drive Up OxyContin Prescriptions

A Long-Standing Issue

Purdue Pharma admitted to paying two professional medical doctors to actively drive up OxyContin prescriptions while participating in Purdue’s doctor-speaker program. The three counts that they plead guilty to include violating federal anti-kickback laws and actively conspiring to defraud the United States.

While they admitted to this wrongdoing and insisted that company policies and standards had changed significantly, the Sackler family does have a lengthy history of prior court cases and allegations of fraud and greed mongering.

Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James directly sued the Sackler family for allegedly pocketing billions of dollars in profits over the course of the past 20 years. James participated in the Wednesday hearing, offering a written statement claiming that, “While our country continues to recover from the pain and destruction left by the Sacklers’ greed, this family has attempted to evade responsibility and lowball the millions of victims of the opioid crisis. Today’s deal doesn’t account for the hundreds of thousands of deaths or millions of addictions caused by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. [The settlement] allows billionaires to keep their billions without any accounting for how much they really made. From the beginning, we’ve aimed to unearth how much the Sacklers actually profited and how much they continue to hide away. While no amount of money can ever compensate the pain that so many now know, we will continue to litigate a case through the courts to secure every cent we can to limit future opioid addictions. We are committed to holding the Sacklers and others responsible for the role they played in fueling the opioid crisis.”

In 2007, there was another case between the Justice Department and Purdue Pharma that resulted in a highly controversial deal – one that many still consider a “missed opportunity.” The deal required the company to pay roughly $645 million in damages after they were found guilty of actively participating in illegal opioid marketing practices. Had control of the company been relinquished in 2007, hundreds of innocent lives might have been saved. However, details of this particular case were kept hidden from the public, and the company likely resumed aggressive marketing techniques shortly after paying the settlement. Over the course of the next 10 years these techniques continued, generating billions of dollars in profit for the Sackler family and their company higher-ups while compromising the well-being of thousands of men and women throughout the country.

Putting an End to the Epidemic

The Sackler family is being asked to relinquish control of the company, which would henceforth operate as a public trust under government control. However, the company would still be able to manufacture prescription opioids like OxyContin, so long as they continue to do so lawfully. While a reduction of aggressive marketing campaigns will undeniably make an impact on the prevention of future cases of OxyContin addiction and overdose, prescription drug addiction remains a major public health crisis throughout the US. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were over 18 million American adults that admittedly abused a prescription medication during the year 2017 alone. Of these individuals, roughly 2 million abused a prescription opioid narcotic like OxyContin for the first time.