Public nuisance

OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma pays up

The State of Oklahoma made national headlines late last month when Attorney General Mike Hunter reached a $270 million settlement with OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma. The settlement includes $75 million from the Sackler family, who own the company. Also named on the lawsuit are Johnson & Johnson, Allergan, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and others.

Hunter first filed suit on behalf of the state two years ago, alleging that pharmaceutical companies helped instigate the opioid crisis through aggressive marketing and sales of opioid painkillers. Purdue, particularly, was accused of spreading false and misleading information about the painkiller OxyContin. The settlement was reached one day after the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied the company’s appeal for a 100-day delay of the trial.

While the settlement doesn’t erase the damage of the humanitarian crisis, it could have a big impact on people struggling with addiction in Tulsa. In fact, $200 million from the settlement has been endowed to the OSU Center for Wellness and Recovery which specializes in pain and addiction. Hunter said in a press conference that the Center “is already a national leader in studying and treating addiction as a brain disease and finding innovative ways to cure it. This endowment will allow the university to expand its footprint to a national level to combat the [opioid] crisis.”

The settlement also includes $12.5 million for cities and counties to directly address the effects of the opioid crisis, $60 million in litigation costs, and an agreement from Purdue not to promote opioids in Oklahoma.

Purdue has been hounded by allegations of improperly advertising opioids for years. In 2007 Purdue, along with three executives, pleaded guilty in federal court to misleading regulators, doctors, and patients about OxyContin’s risks.

In a statement of facts from the plea deal, Purdue admitted that “beginning on or about December 12, 1995, and continuing until on or about June 30, 2001, certain PURDUE supervisors and employees, with the intent to defraud or mislead, marketed and promoted OxyContin as less addictive, less subject to abuse and diversion, and less likely to cause tolerance and withdrawal than other pain medications.”

The statement then goes on to acknowledge that salespeople were mistrained and spread falsehoods about the product. Lies included a claim that less oxycodone could be extracted from the pill, and that the drug produced a milder euphoria. In fact, oxycodone—the active ingredient in OxyContin—is twice as strong as morphine.

A 2015 deposition divulged internal emails from 1997, the year after OxyContin hit the market. The emails were between Purdue head of sales and marketing Michael Friedman and Dr. Richard Sackler, whose family owns the company. Friedman wrote to Sackler, noting that many doctors falsely believed the drug was weaker than morphine and advising that this view not be corrected.

“It would be extremely dangerous at this early stage in the life of the product to make physicians think the drug is stronger or equal to morphine,” Friedman wrote. “I agree with you,” Sackler wrote back, then asking if there was any resistance from within the company.

Court documents show that the Sackler family made more than $4 billion from opioids alone from 2008 to 2016. The following year, 47,600 people died from opioid overdoses, according to the CDC. It is estimated the opioid crisis will cost $9 billion in Oklahoma, where more deadly overdoses involved prescription painkillers than alcohol and illegal drugs combined.

Purdue is facing bankruptcy amid the litigation. Some attorneys believe that the settlement is a sign of things to come for the company, which is facing over 1,600 lawsuits in a federal court in Northern Ohio. The U.S. House Oversight Committee has also asked the company to turn over documents related to marketing and sales of OxyContin.

“The agreement reached today will provide assistance to individuals nationwide who desperately need these services—rather than resources on protracted litigation,” the Sackler family said in a press release. The statement goes on to decry the “attacks on our family,” saying that they “misdirect attention away from crucial issues such as the terrifying rise in illicit fentanyl overdoses.

“To that end, Purdue Pharma recently received fast-track approval from the FDA for its groundbreaking drug, Nalmefene, which is designed to reverse fentanyl overdoses.”

Attorney General Hunter has since dropped a number of the original claims against the companies, consolidating into a charge of public nuisance. Hunter said that “as we got closer to trial, it became more and more apparent to us that [was] our strongest cause of action against the defendants.”

The trial is set to begin May 28.