Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10981
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Executives Won't Serve Time, After Plea In OxyContin Case
Associated Press 2007 Jul 21
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118502069510974147.html
Full text:
ABINGDON, Va. — A judge ordered executives for Purdue Pharma L.P., the maker of OxyContin, to pay fines and perform community service rather than serve jail time for misleading the public on the painkiller’s addictiveness.
The sentence was in line with a previous plea deal announced in May, in which the maker of the narcotic painkiller — and three of its executives — pleaded guilty to telling doctors that OxyContin was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications. Under the plea deal, the company and executives agreed to pay $634.5 million in fines.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Jones officially levied the fine on Purdue along with the company’s top lawyer, its former president and its former chief medical officer. Michael Friedman — who retired in June as Purdue’s president — 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. Judge Jones also placed the company on probation for five years and each of the executives on probation for three years. He also ordered the three to perform 400 hours of community service related to prevention of prescription drug abuse. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani played a central role in negotiating on behalf of Purdue with federal prosecutors, but Judge Jones said “I completely reject” suggestions that political influence resulted in a lesser punishment for Purdue.
The judge’s orders followed a three-and-a-half hour hearing that included statements by numerous people who said their lives were changed forever by addiction to OxyContin, a trade name for a long-acting form of the painkiller oxycodone. 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. Many of the nearly 20 speakers at the hearing called for jail terms for Messrs. Friedman, Udell and Goldenheim, saying the fines were a small price for the devastation to lives from OxyContin addiction. “Money can’t buy all the lives that are lost,” said Robert Palmisano, 23 years old, who said he was addicted to OxyContin for four years but has been off the drug for 17 months.
Attorneys for the three executives said giving them criminal convictions was punishment enough, and noted that they were charged because of their job titles, not because they themselves promoted OxyContin as a drug with little addiction potential. “They are not here today because of any acts of misconduct on their part,” defense attorney Howard Shapiro said. “They are good men.” The speakers, many of whose children died after trying the drug only once, disagreed. “I feel you are legal drug users, nothing more than a large corporate drug cartel,” said Lee Nuss of Palm Coast, Fla., as she addressed the Purdue Pharma contingent.
Attorneys for both sides acknowledged the pain of those who had lost loved ones, but urged Judge Jones to accept the plea agreement. “By pleading guilty they acknowledged that doing nothing was not good enough,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Ramseyer said. “We cannot bring those people back. It’s not something this case can do.” The fines are to 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.
Purdue, based in Stamford, Conn., has said it accepted responsibility for its employees’ actions and has put in place training and monitoring programs to ensure overpromotion of OxyContin doesn’t happen again. But officials objected to any ties between the plea agreement and abuse of the drug.
From 1996 to 2001, the number of oxycodone-related deaths nationwide increased fivefold 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. Survivors of the victims want the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify OxyContin for use only for severe pain. The drug currently can be prescribed for moderate pain.
