Purdue protest
An Aug. 17 protest attended by about 500 people outside the company’s downtown Stamford headquarters revealed how the hundreds of lawsuits filed in recent years that accuse the company of deceiving medical professionals and patients about its opioids, including OxyContin, are fueling grassroots campaigns.
Controversy surrounding Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid crisis has spilled from the courtrooms into the streets.
An Aug. 17 protest attended by about 500 people outside the company’s downtown Stamford headquarters revealed how the hundreds of lawsuits filed in recent years that accuse the company of deceiving medical professionals and patients about its opioids, including OxyContin, are fueling grassroots campaigns. While the company points to a number of initiatives to tackle the opioid crisis, the protesters’ activism is unlikely to dissipate until the lawsuits are resolved.
“This has turned into a moment of national reckoning for Purdue,” Ryan Hampton, an organizer of last week’s protest, said in an interview. “We should be camped out at the headquarters every single day with a bull horn until we bleed them dry of every single dollar they can pay.”
Purdue issued a statement in response to the latest demonstration that said the company shared the protesters’ concerns and was “committed to working collaboratively with those affected by this public health crisis on meaningful solutions to help stem the tide of opioid-related
overdose deaths.”
The company has not made any executives available for an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media to discuss the protests.
Growing movement
A lawsuit filed in June against Purdue by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey did not go unnoticed by Cheryl Juaire, 59, of Marlborough, Mass., who came up with the idea for last week’s protest. Her 23-year-old son, Corey, died of a heroin overdose in 2011.
“I downloaded the 77-page document of the (Massachusetts) lawsuit, and I read the whole thing,” Juaire said in an interview. “I wanted to see what they were doing. It was definitely a source of motivation for creating this event.”
Most of the protesters at last week’s demonstration had lost at least one family member or friend to a fatal opioid overdose or knew someone in recovery from opioid addiction.
Rhonda Lotti, 48, traveled to the event from Watertown, Mass. Her 19-year-old daughter, Mariah, died of a heroin overdose in 2011. She had previously taken unprescribed OxyContin.
“I feel like she never would have jumped from marijuana and alcohol to heroin,” Lotti said. “OxyContin provided that bridge in between.”
Friday’s gathering marked the third protest in the past three months outside Purdue’s building at 201 Tresser Blvd.
Other recent demonstrations included the installation June 22, in the headquarters’ front driveway, of an 800-pound spoon sculpture, which was stained to represent burnt heroin.
Fernando Luis Alvarez, who owns an art gallery of the same name on Bedford Street in downtown Stamford, was arrested and charged with obstruction of free passage and interfering with police related to his role in the spoon protest. He applied in court last month for “accelerated rehabilitation,” which would expunge his record in 13 months, if he were not arrested again during that period.
Purdue’s response
Amid the outcry, Purdue officials have touted in statements companybacked initiatives intended to combat the opioid crisis.
Last week, the company announced that more than 6,000 high school students across Connecticut, California, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia were able to use a digital prevention curriculum during the past school year through the company’s participation in the Prescription Drug Safety Network.
Purdue has allocated $2 million in past years to support the curriculum, including $500,000 to fund the program’s expansion in Connecticut during the next two years.
Around the turn of the year, Purdue outlined its work on opioid education and oversight initiatives in full-page ads that ran across print and digital platforms in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Hearst Connecticut Media’s daily newspapers.
Several estimates put the cost of such ads in publications such as The New York Times at more than $150,000.
“As someone who almost died because of their actions, I think we deserve more than a New York Times ad. Those ads are pure whitewashing,” Hampton said. “We need real answers.”
Hampton, 38, of Los Angeles, struggled with addiction to opioids including OxyContin and heroin, before entering recovery in 2014.
Focus on the legal system
The protests are unlikely to soon fizzle out given the prevailing sentiment among the demonstrators that the company has not been held fully accountable for the toll of OxyContin abuse.
“We need Big Pharma — they do important things for this country,” said Doug Filler, 51, of Wayne, N.J., whose 22-year-old son died of a heroin overdose in 2016. “But they have to have a sense of responsibility that what they make can create a monster. They’re necessary, but they did something evil.”
During last week’s protest, Hampton and Juaire went in the building to deliver a letter for Purdue CEO and President Craig Landau, calling for the establishment of a Purdue-financed fund to tackle the opioid crisis. Such a pool would resemble the one established by tobacco companies as part of a nationwide settlement in 1998 that was worth $246 billion.
“Any reparations that Purdue would make would have to be without strings attached, so it doesn’t become a reputation-laundering effort on their part,” Hampton said. “It needs to be in the billions of dollars to fund prevention and recovery services.”
A major fund to respond to the opioid crisis would most likely comprise penalties or settlements from the lawsuits filed against Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies.
“I like that notion of a dedicated fund, in which Purdue would be a major contributor, but not the only contributor,” said Angela Mattie, a professor in the schools of business and medicine at Quinnipiac University. “Government officials and other experts would also have to be involved. But, to solve this problem, you have to have an interdisciplinary approach. There has to be a national movement.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuits continue to mount. Last week, New York became the 27th state to sue the company. Purdue denied the complaint’s allegations, and it has similarly rejected the other suits’ accusations.
“The demonstrations will encourage others to mobilize, which, in turn, brings the litigation further into the public debate,” said Robert Bird, a professor of business law at the University of Connecticut. “Protests don’t compel a certain verdict by a judge or jury, but they do create a different context for how these disputes are seen.”