Purdue Pharma and several top executives will pay $634.5 million after pleading guilty to fraudulently marketing the drug OxyContin, helping cause what the Justice Department calls “one of our nation’s greatest prescription drug failures,” reports USA Today. Purdue’s sales staff told doctors the drug was hard to abuse, less addictive than other pain medications, and could be stopped without patients experiencing withdrawal.
“Purdue knew its claims were false,” said U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, calling OxyContin nothing more than a “habit-forming narcotic derived from the opium poppy.” Last year, about 1.4 million prescriptions were written for OxyContin, down from nearly 6.6 million in 2003. The company said the misleading marketing occurred before July 2001 and that it has increased warnings about the drug since that time.
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-10-oxycontin-plea_N.htm