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Nova


Registered: 10/16/02
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OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty
#6898137 - 05/10/07 02:48 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty
Quote:
OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty
By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago
The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug's risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.
Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.
The plea agreement settled a national case and came two days after the Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.
"With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public," Brownlee said. "For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice."
Privately held Purdue learned from focus groups with physicians in 1995 that doctors were worried about the abuse potential of OxyContin. The company then gave false information to its sales representatives that the drug had less potential for addiction and abuse than other painkillers, the U.S. attorney said.
Ken Jost of the Justice Department's Office of Consumer Litigation said this case should put pharmaceutical companies on notice that they won't be able to get away with breaking the law to make a profit.
"The things that they plot in their boardrooms, the things that they do behind closed doors will not stay behind closed doors," Jost said. "We have the people, we have the resources. We'll take the time and we'll take the effort to find out what they did and how they did it."
Purdue Pharma said it accepted responsibility for its employees' actions.
"During the past six years, we have implemented changes to our internal training, compliance and monitoring systems that seek to assure that similar events do not occur again," the company said in a news release.
OxyContin, a trade name for oxycodone, is a time-release painkiller that can be highly addictive. Designed to be swallowed whole and digested over 12 hours, the pills can produce a heroin-like high if crushed and then swallowed, snorted or injected.
From 1996 to 2001, the number of oxycodone-related deaths nationwide increased five-fold while the annual number of OxyContin prescriptions increased nearly 20-fold, according to a report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2002, the DEA said the drug caused 146 deaths and contributed to another 318.
The U.S. attorney said the guilty pleas were entered Thursday morning in U.S. District Court in Abingdon, about 135 miles southwest of Roanoke. In an unusual move, Brownlee said, company chief executive officer Michael Friedman, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of misbranding the drug. Of the total fine, $34.5 million was levied on those three.
The fines will be distributed to state and federal law enforcement agencies, the federal government, federal and state Medicaid programs, a Virginia prescription monitoring program and individuals who had sued the company. About $5 million will go toward a six-year company program to monitor compliance with the agreement.
When he took office in 2001, Brownlee said, his office was handling a number of cases related to OxyContin abuse, including crimes by addicts seeking to support their habits and arrests of street dealers and even pharmacists and physicians.
"But it always seemed, I think to me and to the investigators, that there was more," he told a news conference.
Investigators from a number of state and federal agencies worked together on an investigation of Purdue Pharma and began to subpoena company records in 2002, Brownlee said.
"From these millions of records, they picked out probably 300 to 500 documents and pieced together a case," he said.
The Food and Drug Administration was part of the investigation. A spokesman for Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the agency had not acted on a citizen petition Blumenthal's office filed more than three years ago. The petition raised concerns about misbranding and called for stronger warnings and fuller disclosure about OxyContin's dangers.
Kim Rice of the FDA told the news conference that over time the agency has mandated increasingly stronger warnings on labels about OxyContin's abuse potential.
(This version CORRECTS that Goldenheim no longer with company.)
Execs claimed that it wasn't as addictive as other pain meds and encouraged physicians to prescribe it. Make everyone believe it is some harmless miracle drug and get them hooked... O those clever executive dope dealers.
Edited by Nova (05/10/07 02:49 PM)
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Purple_spore
Compulsively Skeptical OG


Registered: 09/11/05
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: Nova]
#6898189 - 05/10/07 03:02 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Thats fuckin stupid!!!
-------------------- Safety first children
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moon_glue
Orwell's Post9/11 Era



Registered: 01/20/07
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: Purple_spore]
#6899191 - 05/10/07 08:13 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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well duh.
any one who sells any kind of drug is exactly the same.
the other companies are busy inventing symptons and ilnesses.
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CUBErt
Connoisseur ofHallucination



Registered: 08/24/05
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Loc: Southern CA
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: moon_glue]
#6901577 - 05/11/07 10:38 AM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Wonder if it will be harder to get Oxy
-------------------- -CUBErt
 
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Brainiac
Rogue Scientist



Registered: 04/29/06
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Loc: 與您的女朋
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: CUBErt]
#6901966 - 05/11/07 12:14 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Thats odd they push pills,and a flower is banned.
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Fair is Fair
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CUBErt
Connoisseur ofHallucination



Registered: 08/24/05
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: Brainiac]
#6902060 - 05/11/07 12:40 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Brainiac said: Thats odd they push pills,and a flower is banned.
Yep, absurdity
-------------------- -CUBErt
 
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DIRTYMAN
Jesusdon'tcomethrough thecotton.

Registered: 11/18/05
Posts: 18,558
Loc: CZ NIGGUH
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: CUBErt]
#6903016 - 05/11/07 05:08 PM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
CUBErt said: Wonder if it will be harder to get Oxy
I doubt this will have any effect on production levels
-------------------- I'm racist. http://k-k-k.com/
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Jaxx
Random muppet.



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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: Nova]
#6905157 - 05/12/07 07:38 AM (16 years, 9 months ago) |
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Only $634.5 million? I bet they made more than that, they should be in jail for 20 years.
-------------------- If you were to draw a continuous straight line with a standard graphite pencil the line would stretch for 35 miles.
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2FiNiTe
ConsideratlyKilling Me



Registered: 06/12/06
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: DIRTYMAN]
#6962857 - 05/24/07 07:57 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
DIRTYMAN said: I doubt this will have any effect on production levels
Thank god, and no it won't now there are a number of American company's that make an equivalent and a number of Canadian company's as well. If I'm correctly informed and keeping up on my drug use.
-------------------- "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living." General Omar N. Bradley
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Hippie Chemist
Freeing Minds


Registered: 04/05/07
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Re: OxyContin maker, execs plead guilty [Re: 2FiNiTe]
#6962873 - 05/24/07 08:01 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
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Finally.
-------------------- Long you live and high you fly And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry And all you touch and all you see Is all your life will ever be. -Pink Floyd-
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