Purdue Pharma in Planning to Settle Lawsuits with 10-12 Billion USD

Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical giant that makes OxyContin, and its owners, the wealthy Sackler family, are in talks to settle over 2,000 lawsuits aimed at the company for the opioid crisis. Preliminary discussions are in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion.

Which Lawsuits Are Involved?

The 2,000 lawsuits stem from cities, counties, and states that have suffered from the opioid crisis for years. The current suit in which settlement talks are being made is in Ohio. The pharmaceutical company wants to consolidate the lawsuits and have the affected parties decide who gets what in terms of settlement talks.

The lawsuit payouts are part of confidential conversations and discussed by Purdue’s lawyers at a meeting in Cleveland last Tuesday, Aug. 20, according to NBC news.

What Are the Lawsuits About?

The lawsuits point blame to Perdue Pharma and …

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How Sackler Family, Purdue Pharma Targeted Veterans

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In Massachusetts, veterans are three times more likely than others who take prescription painkillers to die from an overdose. A new court filing in an ongoing lawsuit between the state and the pharmaceutical company and its stakeholders says that this statistic may have been by design.

Discovery in a Massachusetts lawsuit against the private company Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, and their stakeholders, the infamous Sackler family, has uncovered documents that appear to show how they specifically developed a marketing campaign to target veterans for Oxycontin sales, hoping to increase their usage dramatically.

The unredacted complaint filed against the pharmaceutical manufacturer, as well as a total of eight members of the Sackler family, unveils a targeted marketing campaign facilitated through a self-help book for service members. Similar to an infomercial, the “survival guide” targeted newly home veterans, telling them …

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Making Oxycontin Harder to Abuse Led to Heroin OD’s

Have you ever wondered how heroin became such a prominent drug in the past few years? In 2010, Purdue Pharma, the makers of Oxycontin, were under a lot of pressure from various stakeholders. The popular drug, used for anything from pain for an acute injury to long-term chronic pain like cancer, had proven more addictive than they anticipated. By the 2000’s, it was clear that something had gone awry. People were crushing pills and snorting or shooting them up. So they decided to make Oxycontin more difficult to abuse by reformulating the medicine. By making the pills difficult to crush and more extended-release, people wouldn’t be able to abuse them.

While this was a logical step to take, especially from the drug manufacturer’s perspective, the damage had already been done for many people. Thousands were already misusing the pill, and …

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Purdue Pharma Executives Fight OxyContin Sentence

In a time of upheaval in our society, this case could be seen as an opportunity for our judicial system to “walk the talk” of our Government’s recent claims to be enforcing Corporate Responsibility.

In 2007, three top executives at Purdue Pharma (maker of OxyContin) were criminally charged for their role in the marketing of the addictive narcotic painkiller.  The executives were each convicted of a criminal misdemeanor under a somewhat obscure law known as the “responsible corporate officer” doctrine and could have faced a year in prison.  Instead, former CEO Michael Friedman, former medical director Paul Goldenheim and former general counsel Howard Udell agreed to deals that included three years of probation and fines totaling $34.5 million.

 

As part of their plea bargain, the Purdue Pharma trio also agreed to a sanction prohibiting them from doing business with …

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Good Article about Columbia S.C. Prescription Drug Summit

This morning we all passed around a good summary of the “South Carolina Prescription Drug Abuse Summit.”

The article, which appears in Oregon’s Salem News (article here), does a great job summarizing the content of the summit and also critiquing it and making suggestions. Marianne Skolek is the author of the article and if that name sounds familiar, it is because she is on the front lines of the prescription drug epidemic, fighting for “the victims of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma.”

South Carolina is in the heart of the area of the U.S.  that is being the most negatively impacted by OxyContin.  OxyContin is also known as “hillbilly heroin” because of the prevalence in areas like the Appalachians and also along the “Oxy Express” freeway through the Southern U.S. into Florida.

The very existence of a Prescription Drug Abuse Summit …

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Meet the New Killer – Same as the Old Killer

Obituary writers, morticians, crime scene detectives and the like should familiarize themselves with this phrase: “death was caused by fatal overdose of OxyNEO.”

Purdue Pharma has shown what a powerful marketing strategy team you can hire when you profit mightily off of destroying thousands of families by marketing a drug like OxyContin a.ka. “legal heroin”.

The latest ploy the PR wizards at Purdue Pharma have announced is the discontinuation of OxyContin in 2012 and the launch of OxyNEO. Hmm, wonder if this will fool anyone as the drug continues to be abused and cause addiction and overdose well into the future.

We have been covering the destructive swath OxyContin has carved through the heartland of America including reporting on Purdue Pharma’s halfhearted attempts to minimize the damage by releasing sticky OxyContin that was supposedly harder to abuse (but still just …

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