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Pain Pill Giant Purdue to Stop Promotion of Opioids to Doctors
Pain-pill giant Purdue Pharma LP will stop promoting its opioid drugs to doctors, a retreat after years of criticism that the company's aggressive sales efforts helped lay the foundation of the U.S. addiction crisis.
The company told employees this week that it would cut its sales force by more than half, to 200 workers. It plans to send a letter Monday to doctors saying that its salespeople will no longer come to their clinics to talk about the company's pain products.
"We have restructured and significantly reduced our commercial operation and will no longer be promoting opioids to prescribers," the company said in a statement. Instead, any questions doctors have will be directed to the Stamford, Connecticut-based company's medical affairs department.
OxyContin, approved in 1995, is the closely held company's biggest-selling drug, though sales of the pain pill have declined in recent years amid competition from generics. It generated $1.8 billion in 2017, down from $2.8 billion five years earlier, according to data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions. It also sells the painkiller Hysingla.
Also at Reuters, USA Today, The Verge, and CNN.
Previously: City of Everett, Washington Sues OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma
OxyContin's 12-Hour Problem
South Carolina Sues OxyContin Maker Purdue
Related: Opioid Crisis Partly Blamed on a 1980 Letter to the New England Journal of Medicine
President Trump Declares the Opioid Crisis a National Emergency
Study Finds Stark Increase in Opioid-Related Admissions, Deaths in Nation's ICUs
CVS Limits Opioid Prescriptions
Congress Reacts to Reports that a 2016 Law Hindered DEA's Ability to go after Opioid Distributors
Opioid Crisis Official; Insys Therapeutics Billionaire Founder Charged; Walgreens Stocks Narcan
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Monday February 12 2018, @06:55PM (6 children)
I think that drug companies cutting back on marketing is much more effective than the limp wrist authoritarian stuff being pushed by Sessions. Sessions was a bad pic in my mind, doubling down on the pointless drug war that does nothing but piss away taxpayer money.
I am always really torn on drug use/regulation. I lean toward everything being legal because the government can f off and leave people to do what they want. Sometimes that opinion is hard to deal with when I see at least one drugged out person a day on my way to work wandering the streets screaming at the top of their lungs and trying to claw their eyes out. Drugs are pretty fucked. If all legal though I imagine it would be cheaper and the ones that just want to zone out will be satisfied with smoking pot or opium and not move on to pcp or lsd.
I think a good avenue might be full legalization of drugs but stronger education campaigns for doing heirarchy of danger and risky outcomes.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 12 2018, @07:12PM
I don't have a problem with people being able to take whatever drugs they want. A lot of people don't have a problem with that. I don't have any problem with narcotic pain killers. I might go months without taking one. But then there are people who just can't say no.
So how do we protect people1 from taking bad things that can harm them? We need more government regulations to help us! And more government regulations to help with problems caused by previous government regulations.
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1the real question is how do we protect ourselves from people who take drugs that harm them? Just like I don't want to have to use tax money to pay to raise someone else's kid, I also don't want to have to pay for mental health or prisons for problems caused by certain people and their use of drugs. I guess if there were an obvious solution, we would already be doing it. Or not, because: congress.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Monday February 12 2018, @07:14PM
I'd mod you insightful if you didn't lump in LSD with PCP.
A lot of mainstream news articles about cannabis (or kratom) say something along the lines [cnn.com] of "Marijuana, which is listed on Schedule 1 along with hard drugs like heroin and LSD". But LSD is one of the safest recreational drugs [ias.org.uk] in use, despite all the talk of jumping out of windows.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday February 12 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)
Those people are mentally fucked to begin with. The drugs are just a symptom of their underlying mental disorders as they provide relief and/or escape. I'm more afraid of random drunken assholes when I'm out than a homeless dude trying to forget that he's homeless and living in his own filth.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @09:53PM
Sometimes drug use is caused by mental illness but mostly it is caused by a lifetime's worth of bad decisions made one day at a time. I have absolutely no sympathy towards filthy junkies shitting and pissing on my property and breaking into cars and houses in my neighborhood. In fact, I chase them away along with any dealers I see. Fuck them all.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 12 2018, @09:01PM (1 child)
Your post makes me believe that you have missed a point, Sulla. It isn't the opioids, so much, as the hard core PUSHING of those drugs. The drugs should be available, of course. They are valuable, when they are actually needed. But, they should be pretty much out of sight, and out of mind. Any reasonably competent doctor knows that pain management is a thing. Even less than reasonably competent doctors know about pain management. When a patient is in pain, the doctor should have a decent idea what the patient needs - a mild pain killer, a stronger pain killer, a very strong pain killer, or, in extremis, hospice care to ease the patient out of this life. Any and all pharmacies should have these drugs available, and the doctor's choice should be just that - the DOCTOR'S choice.
But, that hard core pushing. Salesman comes to Doc's office, and promises exaggerated bullshit results for his drug, while at the same time offering free samples, bulk sales deals, and rewards for pushing the product. Even a moderately wealthy doctor is going to take notice if offered a free cruise, if only he pushes a few more of these pills.
Worse, the marketing brochures were published and targeted at THE PATIENTS!! Each time I go to the doctor's office, I see new brochures, telling me that I need to ask my doctor about drugs X, Y, and Z. I seldom pick up a magazine, but there are ads in the magazines. Television, ditto. Radio shows? Yep, more ads - "If you have problems with blah blah blah, ask your doctor about Preparation Zeta!"
This is all bullshit, and Purdue is belatedly admitting that fact. Drugs, kinda like most tools, should sit in the doctor's "toolbox", and when he needs them, he looks for the correct tool for the job, and uses enough of it to get the job done. The stuff shouldn't be marketed openly, like candy.
I was registered as an EMT in 1980. Part of my training included lectures about controlled drugs. (same lessons applied to over the counter uncontrolled drugs, but the threat of legal action was absent in that situation) An EMT should almost never administer narcotics, opioids, barbiturates, or other drugs. ONLY under a doctor's direction should an EMT be giving people drugs. That is not what we have today. EMT/Paramedic teams turn to opioids immediately when the get a patient. Opioids are the default. Why? Not everyone needs strong pain killers. A broken bone is pretty painful, if you attempt to use it - but in many cases, so long as you don't disturb the break, it is nearly painless. Yet - the first thing an EMT asks is, "how bad is the pain?" Stupid question - if it hurts bad, the patient is going to TELL YOU how much it hurts!! Ask a leading question, get the response you were hoping for, and you can break out the good drugs, and charge for them!
Pushers, everywhere you look. Millions, maybe billions of dollars, paid to people just to push the damned drugs.
We need to shut all of that shit down, and allow things to go back to 1980's more normal usage. You'll still get addicts, but the numbers will shrink to a small fraction of what we have today. Just take away the rewards for pushing drugs, things will have to get better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 12 2018, @10:36PM
Generally speaking, EMT-B's mostly can't give the drugs - not the ones you're speaking of. An EMT-B's scope is oxygen, oral glucose, oral charcoal, aspirin, and maybe possibly nitro, albuterol, and epipen (though usually the last three are help patients to self-administer if they already have them... Benadryl is now out of style as survival rates are just as good if it is pushed in the ER). And almost always none of the above without a clear order from medical control except oxygen and aspirin. EMT-P (Paramedic) is a different question, but most Medics I've known are pretty stingy with narcotics. Dilaudid is a lot more common than morphine, and I don't know that hydrocodone is a medic drug - could be wrong, though.
And yep, EMT's ask about pain rating. It's in the manual - S is part of OPQRST. Because once in awhile people answer honestly. And once in awhile people try to be
You can shut all of it down.... but social services have only been gutted worse than the 80s as well. Maybe if we paid attention to the social dynamics of addiction and actually funded addiction treatment and other social programs to prevent such behaviors again, instead of just tossing people in jail, the problem would be better controlled.
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