Purdue given free rein to push opioids in Canada
Purdue Pharma recently announced it’ll stop advertising opioids to doctors in the U.S. after pleading guilty to misleading marketing more than a decade ago. This is a major, albeit belated, departure from the company’s playbook of marketing opioids aggressively to physicians. A recent U.S. Senate report excoriated Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers for funding patient advocacy groups for years.
Several American states have already successfully sued Purdue and others may follow. The firm has paid hundreds of millions to American governments.
We have the same tragic opioid crisis in Canada — 3,000 deaths per year here compared with 30,000 in the U.S. — and trail only the Americans when it comes to opioid prescribing rates. Unlike our neighbours, Canadian governments haven’t taken similar actions against Purdue Pharma. Canadians pay for this inaction. Although the hundreds of millions in penalties paid in the U.S. aren’t trivial amounts, they’re still a small fraction of Purdue Pharma’s profits from the opioid crisis. And there are now many companies selling the types of products Purdue flogged at the start of the crisis. Drug manufacturers are sure to do the simple arithmetic: Huge profits minus small penalties equals lucrative profits.
The math is even simpler in Canada. There are no government penalties here.
Health Canada regulates drug manufacturers, but it has never sanctioned Purdue Pharma. The Competition Bureau enforces the Competition Act, which prohibits false and misleading marketing, but it has shown no interest in the opioid crisis. The Patent Medicine Prices Review Board has also been silent on the issue.
Provincial governments continue to fund high-dose opioid products made by Purdue and other firms. The Ontario government even awarded Purdue a $4.9-million grant in 2007, the same year the company pleaded guilty in the U.S. In advance of Ontario’s leading push toward increasing transparency for drug company payments to prescribers, Purdue disclosed $3 million in payments to health providers in Canada during 2016 alone.
The message sent by Canadian governments to Purdue and other drugmakers is clear: We aren’t prepared to hold you accountable for a crisis you helped manufacture. That message is surely received by other drug manufacturers as well.
To be sure, this is an extreme example of a firm that has already pleaded guilty in another country. If Canadian governments can’t muster the strength to respond in this case, with hundreds of deaths each month attributed to opioids, will they ever prosecute self-admitted misbehaviour by a pharmaceutical company?
The settlement in the 2017 Canadian class-action lawsuit against Purdue shows why Canadian governments must act quickly. The people harmed by the opioid crisis decided to accept a small settlement rather than try to take on a behemoth in the courtroom. That makes sense.
Stunningly, Canadian governments left those harmed by the crisis to fend for themselves and agreed to a settlement of just $2 million for all of the harms associated with the opioid crisis. Both Purdue’s revenues and the toll of the opioid crisis in Canada are measured in the billions. We believe a criminal investigation into the marketing of opioids should be opened. This has already been recommended by Ontario’s health minister.
Purdue may decide not to risk an open airing of the evidence and, instead, plead guilty, as they already did in the U.S. But even an unsuccessful prosecution will remind Purdue and other manufacturers that there are laws in Canada and provide some semblance of justice.
Meanwhile, both the marketing to doctors that Purdue voluntarily stopped in the U.S. and the funding of advocacy groups must also be halted in Canada. Too many lives have been lost. As Canadian communities continue to feel the brunt of the opioid crisis, it’s well past time Canadian governments stand up to Purdue Pharma.