Purdue Pharma will stop promoting its opioid drugs to doctors

Prescription opioid giant Purdue Pharma will stop promoting its opioid drugs to doctors, a retreat after years of criticism that the company’s aggressive sales efforts helped lay the foundation for the U.S. addiction crisis.

The company told employees this past week that it would cut its sales force by more than half, to 200. It plans to send a letter Monday to doctors saying that its sales representatives will no longer come to their clinics to promote the company’s pain-relieving products.

“We have restructured and significantly reduced our commercial operation and will no longer be promoting opioids to prescribers,” the company said in a statement. Instead, any questions doctors have will be directed to the Stamford, Conn.-based company’s medical affairs department.

OxyContin, approved in 1995, is the closely held company’s biggest-selling drug, though sales of the pain pill have declined in recent years with competition from generics. It generated $1.8 billion in 2017, down from $2.8 billion five years earlier, according to data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions. Purdue also sells the painkiller Hysingla.

Purdue is credited with helping develop many modern tactics of aggressive pharmaceutical promotion. Its efforts to push OxyContin included OxyContin music, fishing hats and stuffed plush toys. More recently, it has positioned itself as an advocate for fighting the opioid addiction crisis as overdoses from prescription drugs claim thousands of American lives each year.

Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors face dozens of lawsuits in which they’re accused of creating a public health crisis through their marketing of the painkillers. Purdue officials confirmed in November that they were in settlement talks with a group of state attorneys general and trying to come up with a global resolution of the government opioid claims.

More than 60,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2016, overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids rose to about 20,000 in 2016 compared with 3,105 in 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 200 remaining Purdue salespeople will focus on promoting the company’s drug to treat opioid-induced constipation, Symproic. The drug was introduced last year in partnership with Shionogi & Co.