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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
To pharmaceutical companies promoting the drugs to doctors, in some cases making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness and offering financial incentives to 'high-volume prescribers'.Among the firms pushing the medications into this new, lucrative market was Purdue, makers of drug OxyContin, the brand name for opioid oxycodone.In emails dating back to the 1990s unearthed by American news show PBS NewsHour, Purdue boss Richard Sackler suggests telling doctors that because OxyContin was longer-acting than other opioids, it was also less addictive. At the time, there was no proof to support that claim – and there still isn't. Pharmaceutical companies have promoted opioids to doctors, in some cases making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness and offering financial incentives to 'high-volume prescribers'. Among the firms in the mid-1980s pushing the medications into this new, lucrative market was Purdue, makers of drug OxyContin, the brand name for opioid oxycodone. (Above, protesters stage a die-in outside the courthouse where the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy took place in White Plains, New York, on August 9)Doctors who prescribed OxyContin were allegedly also paid six-figure sums by the company. Purdue filed for bankruptcy in September 2019, facing more than 2,900 lawsuits from aggrieved patients who'd become addicted and seen their lives ruined – or, in many cases where the patient had died, their surviving family members. In August the Sackler family agreed to pay nearly £3.1 billion to resolve the lawsuits.Despite this long-running and high-profile case, UK doctors have continued to prescribe oxycodone and other opioids for chronic pain. The
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