Purdue Pharma faces Congressional investigation

STAMFORD — A Congressional committee is investigating members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma and have been sued by Connecticut and Massachusetts for their alleged role in the opioid crisis.

In a letter Thursday to Purdue CEO and President Craig Landau, Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform requested documents related to the lawsuits’ allegations that the Sacklers who control Purdue fueled the epidemic of opioid abuse through deceptive marketing of pain drugs such as OxyContin and also sought to move into the market for antiaddiction medications.

“The U.S. is in the midst of its greatest public-health crisis in decades,” committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, and committee member Mark DeSaulnier, D-California, wrote in the letter. “Due, in part, to the aggressive overprescribing of opioids like OxyContin, millions of Americans are in the grip of addiction.”

In a statement, Purdue said that it “looks forward to responding to the chairman’s letter. The challenges posed by the opioid crisis are substantial, and we are committed to doing our part to help find and achieve solutions.”

Cummings and DeSaulnier also cited concerns tied to a recent CBS News report that Purdue allegedly pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand in 2001 the designation on OxyContin’s labeling to cover “daily, around-the-clock, longterm” use.

Purdue disputes the CBS report and said the 2001 changes narrowed the intended uses for OxyContin, with a “black box warning.”

Originally filed last June and then re-submitted in January in an unredacted 275-page version, Massachusetts’ lawsuit has attracted nationwide attention. Purdue filed earlier this month a motion to dismiss the litigation.

Massachusetts was the first state to name not only Purdue, but also Sackler members as defendants. Connecticut, which filed its complaint last December, was the second state to sue the Sacklers.

Eight family members, who control a majority of the company’s board seats, have led an aggressive campaign to push sales of Purdue opioids, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

The Sacklers allegedly orchestrated thousands of sales-representative visits to doctors that distorted the drug’s risks and benefits and encouraged dangerous dosages.

OxyContin generates most of Purdue’s annual sales, which have been estimated at more than $3 billion in recent years. The Sackler defendants have paid themselves and their family billions of dollars from those opioid revenues, Massachusetts’ lawsuit said.

Purdue denies those allegations. It also challenges the complaint’s central accusation that it was responsible for a “decadelong course of misconduct in Massachusetts that involved hundreds of deaths.”

“The amended complaint ignores this crucial context — that the opioid-abuse crisis is a complex, multifactorial societal issue

—and instead sets forth a misleading narrative in an attempt to litigate this case in the court of public opinion,” the motion said, in part.

Last January, a Connecticut Superior Court judge dismissed a similar group of lawsuits that included complaints filed by the municipal governments of Bridgeport, New Haven, New Britain and Waterbury. Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury are challenging the decision in the state’s Appellate Court.