OxyContin maker won’t market opioids to doctors
Purdue says it eliminated about half its sales staff.
NEW YORK — The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said it will stop marketing opioid drugs to doctors, bowing to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the company for helping trigger the current drug abuse epidemic.
OxyContin has long been the world’s top-selling opioid painkiller, bringing in billions in sales for privately held Purdue, which also sells a newer and longer-lasting opioid drug called Hysingla.
The company announced its surprise reversal Saturday. Purdue’s statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff and will no longer send sales representatives to doctors’ offices to discuss opioid drugs. Its remaining sales staff of about 200 will focus on other medications.
The OxyContin pill, a time-release version of oxycodone, was hailed as a breakthrough treatment for chronic pain when it was approved in late 1995. It worked over 12 hours to maintain a steady level of oxycodone in patients suffering from a wide range of pain ailments. But some users quickly discovered they could get a heroin-like high by crushing the pills and snorting or injecting the entire dose at once. In 2010 Purdue reformulated OxyContin to make it harder to crush and stopped selling the original form of the drug.
Purdue eventually acknowledged that its promotions exaggerated the drug’s safety and minimized the risks of addiction. After federal investigations, the company and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 and agreed to pay more than $600 million for misleading the public about the risks of OxyContin. But the drug continued to rack up blockbuster sales.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University and an advocate for stronger regulation of opioid drug companies, said Purdue’s decision is helpful, but that to make a real difference, other opioid drug companies have to do the same.
“It is difficult to promote more cautious prescribing to the medical community because opioid manufacturers promote opioid use,” he said. Two other companies that sell the medications, Johnson & Johnson and Allergan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kolodny said that opioids are useful for cancer patients who are suffering from severe pain, and for people who need a pain medication for only a few days. But he said the companies have promoted them as a treatment for chronic pain, where they are more harmful and less helpful, because it’s more profitable.
Purdue and other opioid drugmakers and pharmaceutical distributors continue defending themselves against hundreds of local and state lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable for the drug overdose epidemic.