The opioid crisis isn’t just the Sacklers’ fault – and making Purdue Pharma pay isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems
►https://theconversation.com/the-opioid-crisis-isnt-just-the-sacklers-fault-and-making-purdue-ph
Until the Food and Drug Administration approved #OxyContin in 1995, […] #marketing techniques were forbidden for opioids, which authorities considered to be too dangerous for them.
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In 1949, Endo Products claimed that Percodan, its new oxycodone product, shouldn’t face strict federal controls because it was chemically similar to codeine, a relatively weak opioid used in cough syrups. The company insisted it wasn’t addictive when used as prescribed.
Expert pharmacologists working with federal regulators pushed back. Noting that oxycodone produced an “intense” addiction, they pointed out that people did not always follow doctors’ orders – especially with addictive drugs.
Purdue’s real innovation with OxyContin was commercial, not scientific. The company was the first to market a powerful opioid using the most aggressive strategies other drug companies regularly used to get pharmaceutical innovations into bodies with great speed and efficiency – while maximizing profits.
Once Purdue showed it could be done, competitors quickly followed suit. The industry replaced U.S. medicine’s century-old habits of opioid precautions with a reckless boosterism.
Purdue, that is, didn’t act alone.
Other drugmakers such as Endo and Janssen imitated and even surpassed Purdue’s example once the taboo had been broken.
Generic manufacturers such as Allergan and Teva then profited by expanding and prolonging the boom, as did wholesale drug distributors and retail chain pharmacies. Even the prestigious #McKinsey consulting firm got into the game, advising others how to maximize sales.
The complicity of so many industries makes opioid litigation complex and hard to follow. Cities, states and other plaintiffs didn’t just sue Purdue. They turned to the legal system to make sure that all the other companies pay to repair the harms they caused in building the historic opioid boom that has contributed to more than 500,000 overdose deaths since 1996.
To date the largest national opioid settlement is with the three main opioid distributors and Johnson & Johnson, manufacturer of the Duragesic and Nucynta opioids. It totals $26 billion, significantly more than what Purdue and the Sacklers are paying.
But financial settlements cannot solve every problem that made this crisis possible. Purdue and its competitors were able to put profits over consumer safety for so long, in part, because their marketing strategies closely approximated how other medicines are sold in the U.S.
The opioid crisis, in other words, revealed in an exaggerated fashion problems prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry more generally. Until those broader problems are resolved, the unhappy history of addictive prescription drugs will keep repeating itself.
Dommage que la responsabilité des « #autorités » ne soit qu’implicitement évoquée.
#pharma #opioides #opiacés #mode #états-unis