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Purdue Pharma Ready To Profit From OxyContin Use Or Addiction Recovery
Information has come to light that shows that Purdue Pharma, creator of the painkilling drug OxyContin, found an additional "attractive market" related to their new drug - namely, the treatment of opioid addiction resulting from the use of their product.
In September 2014, Purdue embarked on a secret project to join an industry that was booming thanks in part to OxyContin abuse: addiction treatment medication. Code-named Project Tango, it involved Purdue executives and staff as well as Dr. Kathe Sackler, a daughter of the company co-founder Mortimer Sackler and a defendant in the Massachusetts lawsuit...
Internally, Purdue touted the growth of an industry that its aggressive marketing had done so much to foster.
“It is an attractive market,” the team working on the project wrote in a presentation. “Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.”
In 2015, Purdue turned its attention to another potential product, the overdose reversing agent known as Narcan, calling it a “strategic fit.” Purdue executives discussed how its sales force could promote Narcan to the same doctors who prescribed the most opioids. Purdue said in the statement Wednesday that it decided against acquiring the rights to sell Suboxone and Narcan.
(Via STAT.)
Science fiction fans may recall Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly, in which an undercover police narcotics agent spies upon his own household. Over time, he begins to use Substance D, which over a long period of time disrupts his own brain, weakening his corpus callosum, causing him to both spy on himself and be unaware of doing it.
Eventually, as a recovering addict, he is assigned to the New-Path farming commune to perform simple farm tasks while his neurocognitive deficit heals. While doing so, he discovers neat rows of blue flowers which are the source of Substance D. So his recovery consists of raising the next generation of addicts, and so on.
Thanks to Dan for contributing the source and the reference for this story.
In internal correspondence beginning in 2014, Purdue Pharma executives discussed how the sale of opioids and the treatment of opioid addiction are “naturally linked” and that the company should expand across “the pain and addiction spectrum,” according to redacted sections of the lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general...
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/3/2019)
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