Business OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma files for bankruptcy protection

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma files for bankruptcy protection

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday.

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OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, collapsing under the weight of thousands of lawsuits from states and individuals seeking damages stemming from the opioid crisis.

Purdue’s board approved the much-anticipated bankruptcy filing, days after reaching a tentative deal to settle some 2,000 opioid lawsuits filed by local governments, Native American tribes and states suing the company over the toll of opioids.

“This settlement framework avoids wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and years on protracted litigation,” said Chairman of Purdue’s board of directors, Steve Miller, in a statement. He said it “instead will provide billions of dollars and critical resources to communities across the country trying to cope with the opioid crisis.”

The Stamford, Connecticut-based company has been accused by nearly every U.S. state of downplaying how dangerously addictive its blockbuster pain killer is while exaggerating its benefits. The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, has been blamed for helping fuel an opioid epidemic that’s claims an average of 130 lives a day. They’ve also been ostracized from the philanthropy circles they once traveled as museums across the world reject their donations. Prosecutors say the company’s marketing practices encouraged doctors to push higher doses of the narcotic and contributed to a public health crisis that has caused thousands of overdoses in the U.S. each year.

The privately held company has previously warned that the cascade of lawsuits, which show no signs of slowing any time soon, put it at risk of bankruptcy.

Purdue and a group of state attorneys general had been negotiating for months to settle the lawsuits over the opioid crisis to avoid a trial, expected to begin in October. On Sept. 7, the Associated Press reported that Purdue was expected to file for bankruptcy after those talks hit an impasse. The next day, the company said it was still interested in continuing negotiations.

On Sept. 11, Purdue Pharma reached a tentative agreement to settle some 2,000 opioid lawsuits filed by local governments, Native American tribes and states set to go to trial next month. That deal didn’t include several states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Opioid drugmaker Insys Therapeutics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection June 10, marking the first drugmaker driven to bankruptcy due to its legal costs tied to the opioid crisis. Opioid maker Mallinckrodt reached a tentative settlement with two Ohio counties in early September following reports that it might file for bankruptcy.

The attorneys representing Purdue say accusations against the company are “not supported by facts and are fundamentally flawed,” adding its opioid painkiller represents less than 2% of the U.S. market. They also say new lawsuits rehash a lot of the same old allegations.

However, court filings against Purdue paint a different picture. Legal documents contend the company over the years repeatedly failed to alert authorities to reports its painkillers were being abused. The Sackler family also boasted about its sales, documents show. According to a court filing in Massachusetts, Richard Sackler, who was the company’s president from 1999 to 2003, said at an event that “the launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white.”

In March, Purdue and the Sacklers agreed to pay $270 million to Oklahoma to settle a lawsuit accusing the drugmaker of ruthlessly marketing and misleading the public about OxyContin. As a part of that agreement, Purdue agreed to contribute $102.5 million to fund the creation of a National Center for Addiction Studies at Oklahoma State University.

OxyContin is a prescription drug used to treat moderate-to-severe pain in adults. From 1999 to 2017, nearly 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. OxyContin first came on the market in 1996.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

I still don't totally understand how Oxycontin came to drive the opioid crisis in the US when oxycodone was already in use prior to the development of Oxycontin.

Marketing. My understanding is that oxycodone wasn’t deliberately given the exposure to doctors, patients, and junkies at the time.
Edit: And it being delayed release as mentioned further up the thread.

 

[The best and greatest]

Marketing. My understanding is that oxycodone wasn’t deliberately given the exposure to doctors, patients, and junkies at the time.
Edit: And it being delayed release as mentioned further up the thread.

The key everyone forgets is that Oxycontin was initially sold as a totally-seriously-non-addictive alternative to Codone.

 

[Chichan]

Easier to attack the company that makes the thing than go after the reason behind why people turn to opiates. What's causing so much pain that it's preferable to take drugs?

And what happened to personal responsibility? People know what these drugs do, it's not like there's warnings everywhere and have been warned for decades.

Minor pwl, but getting an illness that causes such innumerable pain that you are hunched over and can barely walk. Regular NSAIDS don't do shit and even the strong shit barely dulls it so, you have to take more to function.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

The key everyone forgets is that Oxycontin was initially sold as a totally-seriously-non-addictive alternative to Codone.

This. On top of everything else, Purdue ran campaigns and ads on how Oxycontin had "given people their lives back", and how completely "safe" it was. Rather infamously, and unfortunately, the people who starred in these commercials often became addicts themselves.

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

What's causing so much pain that it's preferable to take drugs?

A

According to an employee in 2006, a sprained ankle.

90 tablets. 1 refill.

 

[TowinKarz]

Weren't pharmacutical companies caught in shipping loads of "free samples" to suburban households?

I don't know where you got that from, US pharmaceutical/drug law does not allow the shipping of unsolicited drugs to anyone, in any form, let alone "sample" form. Samples still must be given BY a licensed pharmacy from an RX written BY a licensed prescriber. That's why med commericals always say "ask your doctor if Helikopter is right for you" not "For free trial, call ..." If they HAD done that, DEA agents with AR15s would've kicked in their doors long ago.

According to an employee in 2006, a sprained ankle.

90 tablets. 1 refill.

I'm calling BS insofar as a schedule 2 narcotic CANNOT be refilled. 90% of our fake Oxycontin scripts were spotted because someone tried to give themselves 10 refills..... A fresh RX is required each time (which only makes the docs even MORE complacent as that's so you have to physically SEE the patient and decide if they are abusing) If they were just phoning it in, shame on them too.

Also 90 tabs is another red flag, nobody sane writes for that many Oxy.

Hell, when I mashed my hand in a log splitter and had 2 metal staples holding my thumb on, I only got twelve....

Schedule 4s can be refilled, but no more than 5 times. If your friend had refills and 90 to start, then he simply wasn't getting Oxycontin.




I did 5 years as a pharmacy tech mid 00's, a lot of things you see tossed around in casual conversation about this stuff just isn't correct, it's exaggeration or rumor or lay misunderstanding of what's really going on .

I really want to see what evidence in court was submitted, but, the stories never focus on that, just the body count and claims of "overperscription" which are probably true, but I wanna see the "meat"

 

[Rei is shit]

Marketing. My understanding is that oxycodone wasn’t deliberately given the exposure to doctors, patients, and junkies at the time.
Edit: And it being delayed release as mentioned further up the thread.

A lot of the marketing was done directly to doctors. A friend of mine was in med school in the mid 90s and he said that one day a drug rep gave a presentation about oxy to pretty much the whole med school. It was all this "don't worry its not addictive at all" and "pain management is the most important thing in medicine today" shit. This was at a top tier med school too, so just imagine what they got away with at second and third tier schools.

 

[neverendingmidi]

What's causing so much pain that it's preferable to take drugs?

My dad wishes he could get oxycontin. He broke his back as a teen, and now that he's old and has arthritis in it, it would be useful. He had xrays done of his back and a surgeon pretty much said there was a higher likelihood of him being paralyzed with surgery rather than improved. But getting a prescription is damn near impossible now.

They also have seriously restricted it if you have surgery. A friend of mine was in a car accident, had one surgery that left her with pins and splints and traction going into her leg until the next surgery that was a month away. She got five days of narcotics, no refills. She had three weeks of agony until the next surgery.

So addicts fuck up shit for everybody.

 

[DrunkJoe]

I don't know where you got that from, US pharmaceutical/drug law does not allow the shipping of unsolicited drugs to anyone, in any form, let alone "sample" form. Samples still must be given BY a licensed pharmacy from an RX written BY a licensed prescriber. That's why med commericals always say "ask your doctor if Helikopter is right for you" not "For free trial, call ..." If they HAD done that, DEA agents with AR15s would've kicked in their doors long ago.




I'm calling BS insofar as a schedule 2 narcotic CANNOT be refilled. 90% of our fake Oxycontin scripts were spotted because someone tried to give themselves 10 refills..... A fresh RX is required each time (which only makes the docs even MORE complacent as that's so you have to physically SEE the patient and decide if they are abusing) If they were just phoning it in, shame on them too.

Also 90 tabs is another red flag, nobody sane writes for that many Oxy.

Hell, when I mashed my hand in a log splitter and had 2 metal staples holding my thumb on, I only got twelve....

Schedule 4s can be refilled, but no more than 5 times. If your friend had refills and 90 to start, then he simply wasn't getting Oxycontin.




I did 5 years as a pharmacy tech mid 00's, a lot of things you see tossed around in casual conversation about this stuff just isn't correct, it's exaggeration or rumor or lay misunderstanding of what's really going on .

I really want to see what evidence in court was submitted, but, the stories never focus on that, just the body count and claims of "overperscription" which are probably true, but I wanna see the "meat"

I got at least 50 oxy after my car accident after a few weeks of getting a morphine drip and some form of pills every 4 hours while I was in said hospital. I had to quit cold turkey was physically addicted. I also had some other nerve pain killer that wasnt an opiod in the drug cocktail they fed me. I used that for a few months without problem.

 

[Dynastier]

Easier to attack the company that makes the thing than go after the reason behind why people turn to opiates. What's causing so much pain that it's preferable to take drugs?

And what happened to personal responsibility? People know what these drugs do, it's not like there's warnings everywhere and have been warned for decades.

Well, in this case the 'experts' were making known false claims about how addictive the drug was. It's one thing to hand you a cup of hot coffee while saying "Careful, it's hot!", it's another to hand you a cup of hot coffee that is overfilled with the lid about to pop off and I say "Don't worry, it's perfectly spillproof and not hot! See, I have these falsified studies that prove it!"
It's the blatant lying and hiding it that they're in trouble for.

 

[Underestimated Nutria]

Ten years ago I remember being hearing about the danger of underprescribing for pain for an unwarranted fear of addiction ... I have a feeling this will be a cyclic thing.

Only a minority of opioid addicts start with a legitimate prescription. Listen ... it takes a lot of work to develop an an addiction, that is, not a liking, but an actual addiction characterised by an abstinence syndrome. A couple months, not days, of daily use, with multiple increasing dose titrations. There is nothing special about oxycodone (Oxycontin), it's a mu opioid agonist literally interchangeable with literally hundreds of other known opioids, except I'm guessing it is, or was, more cost effective to manufacture (it is synthesised from thebaine, formerly a poppy straw waste product); I literally wouldn't be surprised if it genuinely does have a much lower abuse potential if taken properly, since psychological addiction starts when you start correlating your rising and falling mental states to the amount of the drug in your system, which obviously shouldn't happen if you maintain a steady state. Curiously, I read that oxycodone doesn't have a "ceiling" for efficacy. This is untrue. But it's like 240 mg at a time.

Edited to add: where I live, a lot of pain patients are more or less starting off on methadone. It's a way better drug, actually works for neuropathic pain, it's cheap, etc. Except people who should know better think daily dosing works for pain!

 

[Cheesegirl78]

All I know is this will make it much harder for the people that REALLY need these medications to get them.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

And how much liability will the Sacklers actually face? Enough for them not to be rich anymore? To do time in a club fed even?

Here’s hoping the (((Sacklers))) get sued into oblivion and don’t get to weasel their way out of this due to the bankruptcy.

This is the end of it.

This is a settlement negotiated by a bunch of corrupt state AGs, in collusion with shitbag former Alabama AG Luther Strange (one of the GOPe shitbags involved in attacking Roy Moore), who's been working directly for the Sackler scum.
https://www.al.com/news/2019/09/lut...opioid-settlement-embraced-by-gop-states.html

There will be no further substantial suits. Members of the Sackler family will not be hunted down by bounty hunters and served with justice. They got away with it.

So addicts fuck up shit for everybody.

The pusher man fucked this up for everyone. The Sacklers should fucking pay for what they did to millions of lives.

 

[Ineedahero]

The woman who brought that suit had third degree burns on her crotch and thighs from coffee that was kept dangerously hot and served in flimsy cups, at a time when McDonalds had faced and settled multiple suits for similar incidents.

I’ve seen the actual photographs of that woman’s injuries. You ever been toasting marshmallows over a fire and you just let one burn until it’s all black char? Imagine that, but the skin of an old woman’s crotch.

There was already even a law in place about how hot something in a styrofoam cup can be if you’re handing it to someone in a car, and McDonald’s was breaking that law. That lawsuit was 100% legitimate.

She didn't even want to sue them. She just wanted them to pay her $20,000 out of pocket medical bills, and McDonald's only offered her $800. McDonald's would then go on to spend millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign about "frivolous lawsuits", and completely destroyed the woman's reputation. Here's a video explaining it better.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E

Lol, she spilled coffee on herself. Thank you all for proving my point.

 

[fat ugly sped]

I still don't totally understand how Oxycontin came to drive the opioid crisis in the US when oxycodone was already in use prior to the development of Oxycontin.

Oxycontin was prescribed in a way that exacerbates the addictive tendencies of opiods, and Purdue Pharma was integral in pushing this prescription standard. Specifically, they hyped it up as a twice-a-day prescription and recommended that doctors increase the dosage when patients complain of it wearing off early, rather than go to a thrice daily cadence.

What does this mean practically? Well, you have patients who have it wear off in like 8 or 10 hours, so they have to sit there in pain for multiple hours watching the clock for their next dose, which immediately works exceptionally well since the dose is too high. The constant whipsaw between over and under-medicating their pain is basically the best way to give someone an addiction complex. It's hard to come up with a dosing regime that's better at causing addiction than the one Purdue Pharma pushed doctors to prescribe.

 

[Wesley Willis]

Cocaine existed before Pablo Escobar, he just made sure more people than ever got to try it. Purdue did this with Oxy. Instead of hiring teams of smugglers and enforcers, they hired sexy young women to head their sales teams and visit doctors routinely and drop free swag bags like it's an Oscar party.

 

[repentance]

It’s the same active ingredient but the formulation is extended release. That means that it has higher abuse potential because if it’s snorted/ground/injected/ ingested the many incentive ways addicts do the high lasts longer and is stronger. The addictive potential is greater basically.

The way it was marketed also meant it was given to people who shouldn’t really have had it, more of those people and for longer

Perfect storm really

From what I've read Purdue reps were also telling doctors that its effects lasted 10-12 hours when the company had evidence that wasn't true, so people were taking larger/more frequent doses in order to maintain continuous pain control/stave off withdrawal.

Obviously the obscene quantities being prescribed also contributed (and the responsibility for that rests with prescribers alone), but the whole pill mill things seems to have pre-dated Purdue's big marketing push of Oxycontin.

 

[simulated goat]

I still don't totally understand how Oxycontin came to drive the opioid crisis in the US when oxycodone was already in use prior to the development of Oxycontin.

Half life, frankly. Oxy takes you up quick and drops you fast within 3-4 hours. It is shit as a pain medication since you have to keep dosing, but makes a great opioid analogue for crack.

OTOH, hydrocodone has a slower arc and lasts for 6-8 hours and is not as exciting as oxy's rollercoaster of weirdness.

Spoiler: personal anecdote:

One of my family took oxy for a serious burn. It lasted a week before he begged for good old vicodin. His sleep was constantly interrupted by nightmares and breakthrough pain (which was considerable). He told me he also didn't like the loss of control he felt while on the drug, he was just blurting shit out as he thought of it with no ability to filter it.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Big pharma bad

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Half life, frankly. Oxy takes you up quick and drops you fast within 3-4 hours. It is shit as a pain medication since you have to keep dosing, but makes a great opioid analogue for crack.

OTOH, hydrocodone has a slower arc and lasts for 6-8 hours and is not as exciting as oxy's rollercoaster of weirdness.

Spoiler: personal anecdote:

One of my family took oxy for a serious burn. It lasted a week before he begged for good old vicodin. His sleep was constantly interrupted by nightmares and breakthrough pain (which was considerable). He told me he also didn't like the loss of control he felt while on the drug, he was just blurting shit out as he thought of it with no ability to filter it.

The nightmare thing is apparently a known side effect. Doesn't seem to be as common with other similar opoids as it is with oxy. And when we talk about "nightmares" here I don't mean showing up naked in high school, but like full blow Saw movie horror that wakes people up screaming. A surgical recovery nurse I talked to once said that it also seems to give more people apnea spells.