WORLD / Health
OxyContin maker, execs guilty of deceit
(AP)
Updated: 2007-05-11 15:19
ROANOKE, Va. - The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three
of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to
misleading the public about the drug's risk of addiction, a federal
prosecutor and the company said.
Purdue Pharmaceuticals in Stamford, Conn. is shown Tuesday, May 8, 2007.
The drug maker has agreed to pay 19.5 million in a settlement with 26
states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints about the
promotion of the drug OxyContin. [AP]
Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical
officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less
addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, US
Attorney John Brownlee said.
The plea agreement settled a national case and came two days after the
Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states
and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged
physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.
"With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and
potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public,"
Brownlee said. "For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its
executives have been brought to justice."
Purdue spokesman James Heins objected to any suggestion of ties between
the plea agreement and the abuse of OxyContin.
"We promoted the medicine only to health-care professionals, not to
consumers," he said in a statement.
Privately held Purdue learned from focus groups with physicians in 1995
that doctors were worried about the abuse potential of OxyContin. The
company then gave false information to its sales representatives that the
drug had less potential for addiction and abuse than other painkillers,
the US attorney said.
Ken Jost of the Justice Department's Office of Consumer Litigation said
this case should put pharmaceutical companies on notice that they won't
be able to get away with breaking the law to make a profit.
"The things that they plot in their boardrooms, the things that they do
behind closed doors will not stay behind closed doors," Jost said. "We
have the people, we have the resources. We'll take the time and we'll
take the effort to find out what they did and how they did it."
Purdue Pharma said it accepted responsibility for its employees' actions.
"During the past six years, we have implemented changes to our internal
training, compliance and monitoring systems that seek to assure that
similar events do not occur again," the company said in a news release.
OxyContin, a trade name for oxycodone, is a time-release painkiller that
can be highly addictive. Designed to be swallowed whole and digested over
12 hours, the pills can produce a heroin-like high if crushed and then
swallowed, snorted or injected.
From 1996 to 2001, the number of oxycodone-related deaths nationwide
increased fivefold while the annual number of OxyContin prescriptions
increased nearly 20-fold, according to a report by the US Drug
Enforcement Administration. In 2002, the DEA said the drug caused 146
deaths and contributed to another 318.
The US attorney said the guilty pleas were entered Thursday morning in US
District Court in Abingdon, about 135 miles southwest of Roanoke. In an
unusual move, Brownlee said, company chief executive officer Michael
Friedman, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer
Paul Goldenheim each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of misbranding
the drug. Of the total fine, $34.5 million was levied on those three.
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