Trouble could be in store for Purdue Pharma, the makers of the highly-addictive and widely abused painkiller OxyContin, the LA Times reports. A judge ruled this week that the company will have to reveal records and testimony from a 2007 lawsuit accusing Purdue of fraud, conspiracy and negligence in the development and marketing of Oxy, its biggest selling product.
This week, a judge in Pike County, Kentucky, granted a motion to unseal records from the lawsuit, which the company settled last December for $24 million. “The Court sees no higher value than the public (via the media) having access to these discovery materials so that the public can see the facts for themselves,” said Judge Steven Combs. At the time, Purdue did not admit any wrongdoing. Pike County is in a region of Kentucky hit particularly hard by the opioid abuse epidemic which has been sweeping the country for the past decade.
Purdue had argued in court that the records contained “sensitive information” about the company’s “internal business operations,” and should therefore remain secret from the public. When patients and others have sued the company in the past, they sought protective orders to prevent internal documents used as evidence from being made public.
Among the materials that could soon be released are details of a lawsuit against former Purdue president, Richard Sackler, who was involved in the development and marketing of Oxy in the ’80s and ’90s, according to documents obtained by the Times. The documents show that when OxyContin abuse and addiction became a huge problem in the ‘90s, Sackler met with top company execs about how to deal with the crisis.
In one email from 1997, Sackler suggested that opioid abuse was just a ploy by the insurance companies to not fork over money for the painkiller. “We should consider that ‘addiction’ may be a convenient way to just say ‘NO,'” he told executives.
A Times investigation published last week revealed that Purdue aggressively marketed Oxy as a 12-hour pain relief medication to doctors and patients, despite knowing for years that its efficacy wore off after just eight hours. Purdue knew this for decades and did nothing about it, the investigation found.
Purdue has disputed these findings, arguing that the FDA approved OxyContin as a 12-hour drug. Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who filed the initial lawsuit in 2007 when he was attorney general of the state, said this week that revealing these documents would be “vindication” for the many local families who have lost loved ones to overdose or addiction.
”I think it would mean a lot. I don’t know that it would bring closure,” he said. “I was hoping for a day when Purdue Pharma would have to sit facing a jury.”