Opioid maker to change marketing

Drug firm Purdue says it will no longer promote OxyContin to physicians.

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, Hysingla.

Connecticut-based Purdue announced its surprise reversal Saturday. Its statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff last week 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 with a wide range of pain ailments. But some users 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 it won’t make a major difference unless other opioid drug companies do the same.

Allergan, which makes three opioid pain medications, said it has not actively marketed them in years, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, said it stopped marketing the medications in 2015. Both said opioid drugs make up a very small portion of their revenue. The drugmaker Insys said it could not comment immediately, while Teva Pharmaceutical Industries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kolodny said opioids are useful for cancer patients with 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.

U.S. deaths linked to opioids have quadrupled since 2000 to roughly 42,000 in 2016, or about 115 per day.