OxyContin will no longer be marketed to doctors after states leveled drugmaker Purdue Pharma with lawsuits over the prescription painkiller’s addictive nature.
While the decision is considered a big step for a major drug company adjusting to public pressure, health professionals warned there’s a long way to go in fighting the opioid crisis.
“The genie is out of the bottle. Millions of Americans are opioid addicted,” Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University, told the Daily News on Monday.
“We need other drug companies, other top manufacturers to do the same thing.”
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Purdue slashed its sales staff by half effective Monday, and its remaining 200 marketing workers will focus on non-opioid drugs.
Kolodny said halting an aggressive push for doctors to overprescribe would be “a bigger sacrifice for the drug companies who have new opioids.”
Kevin O’Grady, who heads the Midwest Recovery Centers in Kansas City, told USA Today it also addresses just part of the problem.
“This recognition by Purdue is a step in the right direction, however, it only represents a small fraction of the problem,” O'Grady said. “The focus still seems to be trying to stop this epidemic by increasing legal consequences, rather than treating it as an illness.”
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Kolodny also recommended Purdue stop aggressive marketing tactics overseas and funding other groups that promote prescription painkillers.
“If they really mean well, they’ll stop all of those activities,” he told the News.
Purdue has maintained it hasn’t acted improperly and indicated its drugs are 2% of prescribed opioids.
More phony illegal drugs disguised to look like prescription ones have already flooded the underground market as supplies are hit by new regulations, Indra Cidambi of the Center for Network Therapy in New Jersey told USA Today.
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OxyContin was first approved in 1995 as a version of oxycodone with a timed release, and was hailed for relieving pain for up to 12 hours.
But it created a high similar to heroin when those abusing the drug crushed and snorted it. Purdue spent years developing a new form of the pill that’s harder to break up.
Purdue has also developed Hysingla, another opioid that lasts longer than its predecessor.
The Stamford, Conn.-based company has been under fire over how it markets the painkiller.
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Purdue agreed to may over $630 million after pleading guilty in 2007 to misrepresenting how addictive OxyContin can be.
Last year, it was one of several drugmakers accused of marketing opioid painkillers as a safe product — only to fuel a nationwide drug epidemic.
A wave of lawsuits accused the companies of pushing the drugs, which patients became addicted to and then turned to other opioids like heroin.
More than 42,000 people died in 2016 of overdoses from prescription drugs, fentanyl and heroin, according to number released late last year by the National Center for Health Statistics.
“We have restructured and significantly reduced our commercial operation and will no longer be promoting opioids to prescribers,” the company said in a statement.
Monica Kwarcinski, the company’s medical affairs chief, also wrote to prescribers that it planned to pull back on advertising.
“Requests for information about our opioid products will be handled through direct communication with the highly experienced health care professionals that comprise our Medical Affairs department,” she wrote in the note.
from Health - Google News http://ift.tt/2CeKRSI
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