A House committee investigating the opioid crisis is asking three drug makers to answer questions and provide documents about their internal practices, including when they learned prescription opioids could be addictive and how they have marketed the drugs, the Washington Post reports. The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, a large manufacturer of generic oxycodone. It also sent a letter to Insys Therapeutics, which manufactured Subsys, a type of fentanyl that is sprayed under the tongue and is meant for carefully monitored patients in severe pain. The committee asked Purdue Pharma to provide an unredacted copy of a deposition of Richard Sackler — a doctor, former company president and member of the family that owns Purdue. The deposition is part of a lawsuit that Purdue settled with Kentucky for $24 million.
The letter cites a New York Times story on a confidential Justice Department report showing that Purdue knew that OxyContin was addictive shortly after it was put on the market in 1996 — including reports that the pills were being stolen from pharmacies, crushed and snorted — but that the firm did not reveal that information. It said Sackler was told in 1999 about chat-room discussions where people described snorting the time-release painkiller. The report also said prosecutors obtained more than 100 notes from sales representatives from 1997 to 1999 that used the words “street value,” “crush” and “snort” when talking about OxyContin. Purdue said the company plans to cooperate. The letter to Mallinckrodt cites a Washington Post story showing that 66 percent of all oxycodone in Florida came from the company. The company last year paid a $35 million settlement for failure to report suspicious orders and other violations.