,
21 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
A few weeks ago I tweeted about how I was pleased that a pharmaceutical company in the US state of Oklahoma had been ordered to pay $572 million in damages for its role in fuelling the opioid crisis. Yesterday a friend of mine expressed dissent with the judgment.
His reason was that the pharmaceutical companies didn't coerce users into buying, so the judgment was too harsh. He likened it to suing Yahuza Suya for gaining weight after consuming it nonstop. His words may sound insensitive but forgive his ignorance.
His statement stems from a lack of understanding of the pharmaceutical/medical code of ethics as well as the history of the opioid crisis. So, to address his lack of understanding as well as those of others, I have decided to discuss it in this thread.
In 1996 Purdue Pharma, a privately held pharmaceutical company owned by members of the Sackler family, released a new prescription painkiller called OxyContin. The drug uses a controlled release mechanism to deliver large doses of oxycodone (a chemical cousin of heroin).
Over the next two decades Purdue aggressively pushed sales of OxyContin, thereby making billions as stories of opioid addiction grew. From 1999 to 2017, an estimated 400,000 people died from opioid overdoses.
Initially Purdue marketed the sales of OxyContin using ethically acceptable and legal marketing strategies. However, as they noticed a steady rise in prescription and sales of the drug, as well as stories of addiction to it, things took a dark turn.
They promoted false claims to doctors by instructing sales representatives to tell doctors that fewer than one percent of patients became addicted to OxyContin, as well as using the Sackler family's ties within the medical community to promote the drug.
In addition to this, Purdue Pharma increased the dosage of OxyContin, despite knowing that higher doses are more dangerous as they are quick to create tolerance thereby becoming ineffective, which leads to addiction for much higher doses.
OxyContin represented a market-leading 27% of total oxycodone sold during the seven-year period reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. See the graph below for a visual illustration. (Source: Wall Street Journal). 
In 2002, Purdue launched the Massachusetts General Hospital Purdue Pain Program. In a 2018 lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General, the Sacklers chose to start the program “after due diligence, including a review of OxyContin sales data, led staff to conclude that...
...it would help Purdue sell more opioids in Massachusetts.” In 1999 the Sackler family established the Tufts University Masters of Science program in Pain Research, Education and Policy.
Among the benefits that came with this generous gift, Purdue got access to doctors at multiple hospitals; got to control research on pain treatment; and Purdue employees regularly taught a seminar in the program about opioids in Massachusetts.
In 2011, Tufts also promoted a Purdue employee to Adjunct Associate Professor to oversee and offer directions for the Masters program.
What has been stated above are verifiable facts that are public knowledge. However, there are other sleazy underhand dealings that are alleged to have occurred as part of efforts to raise the sales of OxyContin.
Some of these include paying doctors bonuses the more they prescribed OxyContin, even for patients that didn't need it or for pain that regular pain medication could handle, paying for holidays, spa & massage treatments for doctors & even for strip club memberships.
In light of the numerous lawsuits filed against Purdue Pharma, the company filed for bankruptcy protection on the 15th of September with a partial deal aimed at resolving most of the suits.
What struck me with the case of Purdue Pharma is how in this part of the world there is hardly any lawsuit aimed at pharmaceutical companies when they breach their code of ethics or commit acts that are inimical to public policy.
Sometime last year when a documentary about Codeine addiction was released, a pharmaceutical company in Nigeria in a bid to do damage control said it wasn't aware there was a case of addiction to Codeine at such staggering levels. This statement was uttey ridiculous to me.
Your sales target for Codeine is met and rises constantly every month, your purchases for active ingredients used in making the drugs is constantly rising, yet you say you don't know there's an addiction crisis. Come on! Come up with a smarter explanation.
I hope to live to see the day we have Attorney Generals in our states and at the federal level that cast their eyes on the unethical practices inherent in our pharmaceutical industry and take the bold step of doing something about it.
Sources for some parts of this thread include: The Wall Street Journal, uscusa.org and iflscience.org.
