Warning: if you or someone you love have become a victim of the growing opioid addiction epidemic, this is going to make you very, very angry.
More than twenty years ago, Purdue Pharma marketed the pain-relieving drug, OxyContin, as the 12-hour pain reliever. Besides that, OxyContin had few positive differences from other narcotic pain medications, but the 12-hour relief was certainly a selling point.
According to the LA Times, it was the drugs only real selling point:
“Patients would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to take their pills, Purdue told doctors. One OxyContin tablet in the morning and one before bed would provide ‘smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night.'”
With that promise, OxyContin became a billion-dollar industry as the country’s most popularly prescribed painkiller. The promise, however, was false, and there’s proof that Purdue Pharma knew that before the drug was ever released the to the public.
The reason the 12-hour lie is such a problem is because of the drug’s chemical makeup and the rapidly addictive properties it has as a result.
“OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn’t last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.
The problem offers new insight into why so many people have become addicted to OxyContin, one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in U.S. history.”
The LA Times completed an investigation into Purdue Pharma, researching thousands of pages of confidential documents and other records, and released a bullet-points summary of their findings.
- “Purdue has known about the problem for decades. Even before OxyContin went on the market, clinical trials showed many patients weren’t getting 12 hours of relief. Since the drug’s debut in 1996, the company has been confronted with additional evidence, including complaints from doctors, reports from its own sales reps and independent research.
- The company has held fast to the claim of 12-hour relief, in part to protect its revenue. OxyContin’s market dominance and its high price — up to hundreds of dollars per bottle — hinge on its 12-hour duration. Without that, it offers little advantage over less expensive painkillers.
- When many doctors began prescribing OxyContin at shorter intervals in the late 1990s, Purdue executives mobilized hundreds of sales reps to “refocus” physicians on 12-hour dosing. Anything shorter ‘needs to be nipped in the bud. NOW!!’ one manager wrote to her staff.
- Purdue tells doctors to prescribe stronger doses, not more frequent ones, when patients complain that OxyContin doesn’t last 12 hours. That approach creates risks of its own. Research shows that the more potent the dose of an opioid such as OxyContin, the greater the possibility of overdose and death.
- More than half of long-term OxyContin users are on doses that public health officials consider dangerously high, according to an analysis of nationwide prescription data conducted for The Times.”
OxyContin quickly became the most abused drug in the United States. More than 190,000 people died as a result of the drug, and the company that marketed them knew there was a problem.
Many of the manufacturer’s victims sit in jail for drug-related crimes, or least the ones who lived to go to jail, and yet no one at the company has been charged with false advertising resulting in the loss of so many lives.
Featured image via Getty/Liz O’Bayen
