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Friday, January 18, 2019

OxyContin maker promised 'a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition'

A member of the family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma told people at the prescription opioid painkiller's launch party in the 1990s that it would be 'followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,' according to court documents filed Tuesday.

OxyContin and Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma are at the center of lawsuits across the country accusing the drug industry of being responsible for an opioid crisis that killed 72,000 Americans in 2017.

The details of the speech by Richard Sackler were made public on Tuesday in a case brought by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey that accuses Purdue Pharma, its executives and the Sackler family of deceiving patients and doctors about the risks of opioids and pushing prescribers to keep patients on the drug longer.

The documents provide information about former Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler's role in overseeing sales of OxyContin that hasn't been public before.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So sick of hearing everyone blaming everyone else for their problems. These people made conscious choices to take the drugs, and worse yet abuse the drugs

Anonymous said...

Why is it the distributor of drugs is the only one jailed. What about the users. It's like prostitutes - but them in jail and let the John's go. Never made sense to me. They are both guilty.

Anonymous said...

So in the spirit of this, let's sue the people who make spoons and forks--obviously they are responsible for people getting overweight and dying of a multitude of fat-related illnesses....