In the first of what will likely amount to billions of dollars in legal settlements shelled out by the Oxycontin creator, Purdue Pharma has reportedly agreed to pay $270 million to settle claims brought by the Oklahoma attorney general that the company’s misleading marketing practices surrounding the powerful opioid painkiller helped spark the American opioid crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited an anonymous source familiar with the settlement.
Opioid deaths have skyrocketed in recent years as the federal government has cracked down on overprescribing of pharmaceutical grade opioids, forcing more addicted users to turn to street drugs like heroin, which are increasingly cut with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, causing a surge in overdose deaths that are presently killing more Americans a year than died during the entire war in Vietnam.
The settlement is the first to resolve one of the more than 1,600 lawsuits facing the privately held drugmaker, which is reportedly weighing a bankruptcy filing to avoid what’s expected to be an immense legal burden.
Courtesy of Statista
The billionaire Sackler family, which own privately-held Purdue, have been subjected to widespread public scorn over revelations that members of the family pushed the company to misrepresent OxyContin’s addictive qualities in its marketing materials and research. The pill, which was prescribed to treat surgery and cancer pain, was widely prescribed during the 2000s, and quickly became the gold standard for pharmaceutical-grade opioids sold on the street in the US.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HEQDUN Tyler Durden