Moving on from Oxy
As lawsuits mount, maker of OxyContin looks to change focus
Purdue Pharma, caught up in litigation from around the country over its alleged role in stoking the nationwide opioid crisis, this week cut 350 jobs, including the rest of its sales force, as the Stamford company looks to move beyond its signature medication and chart a new course.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma laid off about 350 employees this week, with about half of them making up the remainder of the company’s already-downsized sales force, Hearst Connecticut Media has learned.
About 90 Stamford-based positions were cut, while another 250 still work at the company’s at 201 Tresser Blvd. headquarters. Across all locations, about 550 remain with the company.
The elimination of Purdue’s sales group reflects the firm’s ongoing shift away from opioids, including OxyContin — which are the subjects of hundreds of lawsuits from local and state governments across the country — and increasing focus on research and development of drugs to treat cancer and central-nervoussystem disorders.
“While the development of important new medicines will be the company’s priority going forward, we will continue to support our opioid-analgesic product portfolio, while continuing our commitment to take meaningful steps to reduce opioid abuse and addiction, including research and development of non-opioid analgesic pain treatments,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Among related moves, the company announced in February it would no longer market OxyContin and other opioids to medical prescribers, a move that led to the firm slashing its sales contingent by more than 50 percent, to about 200.
As part of the February announcement, Purdue officials had said remaining sales representatives would focus on Symproic, which treats opioid-induced constipation in adult patients with non-cancer chronic pain, and other potential non-opioid drugs.
Since February, questions and requests for information about the company’s opioid products have been handled through direct com- munication with its Medical Affairs department.
Another 100 employees, in unspecified departments, were laid off in March.
The restructuring has taken place during the first year in charge for CEO and President Craig Landau, who formerly led Purdue’s Canadian business. The company to date has not made Landau available for an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.
Before Landau’s arrival, the company ended its promotional-speaker programs for OxyContin and the opioid Butrans at the end of 2016 and discontinued in late 2017 its speaker series for another opioid, Hysingla.
Amid the organizational over- haul, Purdue faces a wave of lawsuits across the country from local, county and state prosecutors who allege Purdue has fueled the nationwide opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of opioids such as OxyContin.
Among the latest complaints, Massachusetts’ attorney general and city officials in Norwalk and Danbury announced last week they were suing the company.
Those lawsuits accuse Purdue of misrepresenting opioids’ benefits. The Massachusetts litigation also asserts the company recklessly pressured prescribers to give higher and more dangerous doses to keep patients on drugs longer and pushed its products to prescribers whom it knew were writing illegal prescriptions and had patients dying of overdoses.
Other groups continue to target Purdue outside the legal system. Two brothers from Pennsylvania held a silent protest June 5 outside Purdue’s headquarters, during which they projected messages onto Purdue’s building that alleged that the firm was a prime culprit of the national opioid crisis.
While they have denied the lawsuits and protesters’ allegations, Purdue officials have said they share their concerns about the epidemic of opioid abuse.
Among earlier measures aimed at tackling the opioid crisis, Purdue said it has directed prescribers for the past two years to the Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention’s Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The company said it has also referred prescribers to an open letter from Dr. Vivek Murthy, published when he was the U.S. surgeon general, urging medical professionals to join him in tackling the epidemic of opioid abuse.
From 1999 to 2016, more than 200,000 people in the U.S. died from overdoses related to prescription opioids, according to the CDC. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2016 than in 1999, while sales of those drugs quadrupled, the CDC said.