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OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma reportedly exploring bankruptcy
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is exploring filing for bankruptcy to address potentially significant liabilities from thousands of lawsuits alleging the drug manufacturer contributed to the deadly opioid crisis sweeping the United States, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The deliberations show how Purdue and its wealthy owners, the Sackler family, are under pressure to respond to mounting litigation accusing the pharmaceutical company of misleading doctors and patients about risks associated with prolonged use of its prescription opioids.
Purdue denies the allegations, arguing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved labels for its opioids carried warnings about the risk of abuse and misuse associated with the drugs.
Filing for Chapter 11 protection would halt the lawsuits and allow the drug maker to negotiate legal claims with plaintiffs under the supervision of a U.S. bankruptcy judge, the sources said.
No "Big Tobacco" moment for Purdue Pharma. Cut and run.
Previously: City of Everett, Washington Sues OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma
OxyContin's 12-Hour Problem
South Carolina Sues OxyContin Maker Purdue
Tens or Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Needed to Combat Opioid Crisis?
Purdue Pharma to Cut Sales Force, Stop Marketing Opioids to Doctors
Colorado Attorney General Sues Purdue Pharma
Related: The Dutch Supply Heroin Addicts With Dope and Get Better Results Than USA
U.S. Opioid Deaths May be Plateauing
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:54PM (20 children)
Maybe, perhaps, some day, we might vote for people that will change the law. I can dream, right? In the meantime, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
(Score: 5, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 04 2019, @08:14PM
If you don't like the law, why don't you just buy your own laws, like the Sacklers did?
Bootstraps!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday March 04 2019, @08:35PM (18 children)
Most of the country already does, but the people who live in communities most savaged by addiction reliably vote for the party that is actively hostile to changing the laws and holding drug pushers like Purdue accountable. They'd rather vote on issues like abortion, guns, and blame their problems on minorities, Jews, and liberals. It doesn't help that the other party has a huge messaging problem when talking to white people, especially men.
It's not enough to just offer policy that would help, you have to communicate it to them in a way that doesn't leave them feeling talked-down to, insulted, confused, or unintelligent. Democrats aren't very good at that, sadly. The other side has a natural advantage because fear and anger, like sex, sells itself. It's a lot more difficult to get people to sit down and understand nuanced economic ideas, regulation, and technological globalization. The other side's solutions fit on a bumper sticker--despite being almost perfectly wrong.
You want to hold corporations responsible for pushing poison into your community? There's only one Party that even offers the possibility.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 04 2019, @08:43PM (14 children)
I have to disagree. The two parties offer the same possibility of holding the Sacklers responsible, which is zero. Both parties were holding their hands out to the corporations at election time, and corporations are happy to contribute to both parties. The only real chance of change, are third parties winning more than one or two seats at the hog trough.
(Score: 5, Informative) by julian on Monday March 04 2019, @08:53PM (13 children)
HR1. Who is spearheading that? Who is obstructing it? Democrats are far from perfect, but the difference is night and day for anyone with a modicum of moral clarity. HR1 is a sweeping anti-corruption bill, and the GOP is against it. Just repeat that to yourself over and over until you understand. It includes the following campaign finance reforms among its many improvements to our democracy:
So if you're against an act which does those things, then admit you don't actually care about corrupt funding practices. The only reason for not supporting HR1 and the Party backing it is because you are pro-corruption.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Monday March 04 2019, @09:38PM (10 children)
Let's be clear that one party can put whatever they feel looks good (whether they actually practice what they preach or not), in a bill that they know has exactly 0 chance to pass.
(Score: 3, Informative) by julian on Monday March 04 2019, @10:25PM (7 children)
Absent any reason to believe otherwise, I'm going to operate under the assumption that these efforts are sincere. Democrats tried and succeeded in passing sweeping health care reform that, though flawed, did improve a lot of things. Instead of working to improve it, conservatives have been picking away at it for years and years. So they are more than capable of planning big legislation that takes years to gain support for. This is the next big project, along with the Green New Deal.
And if you want to talk about absurd insincerity, Mitch McConnell holds the all-time record when he filibustered himself [washingtonpost.com] after Democrats agreed to vote on a proposal that he submitted in bad faith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday March 04 2019, @10:53PM (2 children)
I'm going to operate under the assumption that these efforts are sincere.
Their game has a name: Villain Rotation [salon.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Troll) by julian on Monday March 04 2019, @11:09PM (1 child)
I don't even need to read past the byline. Greenwald is a troll propagandist for the tribe of far-leftists and anarchists who hate the West so much they'll side with the enemies of America out of political expediency. They are so far out on the fringe they can no longer see a difference between mainstream Democrats and Republicans. I have no use for someone with such an impoverished perspective on American politics, or history.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday March 04 2019, @11:16PM
Troll or not, this is what the party practices.
far-leftists and anarchists who hate the West
Ah, okaaay! Now we know where you're comin' from, sorry for not noticing... thankyoueverymuch :-)
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:04PM (3 children)
You mean that evil healthcare mandate/tax that made my premiums go up 150% each and every year since it passed?
Even though I am in the 85% at most, no where near the 1%.
Yeah, "flawed" is an understatement and "improved a lot of things" a bald faced lie.
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday March 05 2019, @11:02PM
I mean the health care law that allowed my brother to get medical insurance, and thus care, for the first time in his adult life and discover a heart condition which might have killed him later. You're not the only person in this country. The ACA helped many people, and while I am sorry that it did not work to your benefit, your solipsism is deeply unproductive in addition to un-American. By chance do you happen to live in a state controlled by the aforementioned pro-corruption party? The Republicans deliberately sabotaged the ACA in their states where they controlled the governorship and legislature, inflicting pain on their own citizens in order to spite Obama.
Your anger is justified but misplaced. The Republicans and right-wing Democrats are the ones you should be mad at. The problem with the ACA was it did not go far enough, but maybe we will get universal health care one day. If we do, it won't be the pro-corruption party that we will have to thank for it.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:59AM (1 child)
How much would those premiums have gone up without the ACA excuse ?
Forecasts were dire enough that the insurance companies agreed to some changes.
I still don't get how they let the individual mandate get cancelled without a lobbying fight.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday March 06 2019, @04:39PM
I still don't get how they let the individual mandate get cancelled without a lobbying fight.
The conflict of interest was too powerful to cover up. ACA was a republican plan all along. They too, needed the mandate to sell the windfall to the "moderate" democrats that didn't like the actually good parts of the bill. And then the repeal of the mandates bought some votes from the fan base.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 04 2019, @10:34PM (1 child)
The only reason it won't pass is due to the Pro-Corruption party.
Why do you defend the Pro-Corruption party?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @04:56PM
Pro-Corruption party
Is there another kind? On the ballot? I mean, there is, kinda, but they only get around one or two percent of the vote. The Pro-Corruption party gets the rest, sharing the power the same way used car dealers shuffle their inventory. The Pro-Corruption party only thrives because of Pro-Corruption voters that want a piece of the action. They make the Pro-Corruption party the only viable option, and they will tell you so! "Third party vote is a wasted vote". They couldn't be more obvious!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:00AM
Without seeing everything else in the bill, listing a few things it has is insufficient to draw any conclusion about it.
Too many bills contain some good stuff and an endless stream of riders adding all kinds of unrelated nonsense.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:17AM
The only reason for not supporting HR1 and the Party backing it is because you are pro-corruption.
Oh brother! So melodramatic! Now we're demanding party loyalty, eh? I wonder who's modding that stuff up.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @08:44PM
Those people may not be far wrong: the Sacklers are Jewish.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Monday March 04 2019, @08:53PM
Corporations get what corporations want regardless of party. If President Obama cared about the oxy flowing into this country he would have done something about our Afghanistan opium expedition that ensures that our pharma companies have a steady supply of white gold. Everytime we have a situation where a law might pass/not pass in a way that is favorable to pharma we always have some "mavericks" that cross party lines to make sure the profit keeps flowing. Every vote to continue appropriations for the Afghanistan war is a vote for big pharma, every vote for the ACA was a vote for big pharma, every time someone from either party blocked patent reform they were paid by big pharma.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/health/big-pharma-presidential-politics/index.html [cnn.com] (from 2016 election)
http://www.drugsdb.com/blog/big-pharma-political-contributions.html [drugsdb.com] (from 2012 election)
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @10:03PM
True; also the party that hands out free syringes.
It's not a partisan thing. If the Sacklers of shit behind Oxycontin ever read A Scanner Darkly, they'd be running rehab clinics too.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snow on Monday March 04 2019, @07:56PM (5 children)
From TFA:
So the bankruptcy has nothing to do with actually being insolvent in any way, but rather of a way to be above the law?
Must be nice to be filthy rich and better than all those poor people who have to obey laws.
(Score: 5, Funny) by darkfeline on Monday March 04 2019, @09:37PM (2 children)
You don't understand. They have so much money that their bank account ruptured, hence bankruptcy.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @10:38PM
In God we truss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @11:29PM
-aka- "three golden sword brand"
cant recall the chinese characters for now.
also ... can we get opium refill cartridges for vaping?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:39AM (1 child)
...and the next month keep chugging renamed to Pordoe Pharma, 2.0.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 05 2019, @05:22PM
Funny: in Canada, Loblaws changed it's corporate name to Loblaw; i guess in order to get rid of the union and rehire their employees at a lower price.
Something like that. Why is this shit allowed? Why are companies allowed to buy (Loblaw was allowed to buy the biggest Canadian pharmacy company Shoppers Drug Mart) and merge instead of disallowing it and forcing REAL competition? I'm guessing it's because A LOT OF FECKING MONEY PASSES INTO GOVERNMENT HANDS?!
Should not be allowed. Increase competition instead of decreasing it and handing power to the 1%.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 04 2019, @08:09PM (3 children)
What use a label, when the salesmen were bribing doctors to abuse and misuse the drugs? From the patient's point of view, there was generally no intent to misuse or abuse the drug. The doctor prescribed the drug, the patient took the drug as instructed - and he was hooked. (Yes, there were certainly exceptions to that rule. We aren't especially interested in those right now.)
The bankruptcy court needs to deny any attempts to take harbor in it's court. Purdue and the Sacklers need to be wrung dry. And, yes, I mean the Sacklers should be sued, personally and individually. Let the sons of bitches find jobs at McDonald's to feed themselves for the rest of their lives. Maybe they'll resort to eating their own medications to make their lives more bearable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
Purdue will probably give the bankruptcy court the same incentives they gave the Doctors to prescribe that shit... Lots of lap dances.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 04 2019, @08:44PM (1 child)
Wrong one. That was InsysT:
Opioid Crisis Official; Insys Therapeutics Billionaire Founder Charged; Walgreens Stocks Narcan [soylentnews.org]
The More Opioids Doctors Prescribe, the More Money They Make [soylentnews.org] (Subsys)
Insys Exec Allegedly Gave Lap Dance to Doctor While Pushing Deadly Opioid [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 04 2019, @09:45PM
In fairness to AC, it's getting confusing to keep track of the many scandals, between tech, pharma, and the government...
We're gonna have to help the people relax, by bombing Iran, or the NCAA, or something ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Entropy on Monday March 04 2019, @09:12PM (14 children)
Some people don't actually like being in pain. Some nonsense excuse for the "war on drugs" or "for the children" blanket arguments to torture cancer patients(or _ANYONE_ in pain) is awful.
If people want to use drugs then have fun using drugs. For anyone who is in pain(which is most people at some point in their lives) then leave them alone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:41PM (4 children)
Some people don't actually like being addicted. When you're selling basically heroin, perhaps you should tell your patients that and disclose the very real downsides?
People react differently to addictive substances. Be happy if you can have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner but don't be a simpleton and assume everybody can.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:57PM (1 child)
I agree. I was on Rx Fentanyl for 10 years, got fed up with the side effects (memory problems, constipation, even a seizure) and slowly quit everything. That crap turns you into a zombie. It took a year to slowly detox and adjust to the pain. My pain tolerance is now so high I can have dental work done without a local. It sucks to be in pain, but it sucks even more when you can't remember your kids growing up. The memories did eventually return.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:47AM
I was on a high dose of prescription patch Fentanyl that long, and while there was some constipation, it wasn't severe (or at least, not more so than my body the rest of the time) and I didn't experience memory lapses, zombiefy my brain, or otherwise have all that much of an effect. The absolute worst side-effect I got from it was that if I didn't change the patch at least every 3 days, my skin would become intolerably hypersensitive.
Even a quarter-pill of the percocet they gave me recently to replace it (after I pointed out that eating Naproxen like candy when one has fucked kidneys isn't a good move), OTOH, has such severe zoned-out-sleepy-zombie effects that I don't dare take more than 1/8 of a pill if I need to stay conscious, and don't dare drive my car on any dose. It also causes a mild euphoria that I can easily see would cause a serious emotional addiction if I used it more than once in a blue moon. Given the dose is the same number of morphine-equivalents as the Fentanyl I'd dropped down to, that doesn't seem like a good exchange to me.
I naturally have a stupidly high pain tolerance level, but my body has other ways of forcing me to notice that it's unhappy that mess with my quality of life. I'd rather be able to just get on with living my life, not be stuck feeling too fatigued either from a pill or because my body's in pain I can't fully sense.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:59PM (1 child)
Some people don't like knowing what the truth is. When you're making false equivalencies, perhaps you should state that you might not know what most providers actually tell their patients. (Unless, of course, you'd care to share your medical credentials, AC, that would indicate what you know of besides your personal experience and anecdotes you've read?) Then you can study enough pharmacology to learn differences between various opioids. But instead you'd like to pretend that a guarded swimming pool is exactly like an unguarded ocean - you can drown in both, but people who swim responsibly, have a lifeguard present, and are ready to acknowledge risks for cramping rarely drown.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @10:19PM
I'm not an MD but I can read. These are documented facts.
Federal officials said that internal Purdue Pharma documents show that company officials recognized even before the drug was marketed that they would face stiff resistance from doctors who were concerned about the potential of a high-powered narcotic like OxyContin to be abused by patients or cause addiction.
As a result, company officials developed a fraudulent marketing campaign designed to promote OxyContin as a time-released drug that was less prone to such problems. The crucial ingredient in OxyContin is oxycodone, a narcotic that has been used for many years. But unlike other medications like Percocet that contain oxycodone along with other ingredients, OxyContin is pure oxycodone, with a large amount in each tablet because of the time-release design.
-- https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/11drug-web.html [nytimes.com]
It's not very common for corporations to pay $600 million fines and it is very rare for corporations to admit guilt. They know we all know they did it and there was no way out for them, so they absolutely had to admit it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:53PM
And some people push opioids onto those who do not know the perils of addiction.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday March 04 2019, @10:58PM (7 children)
Then why don't we give them something that does a good job of relieving pain but doesn't make them physically addicted, push them to heroin, and get them killed by overdose?
Oh, wait, I know why: Because according to US government official policy ever since the Nixon administration, cannabis (which by all appearances provides a lot of pain relief) is more dangerous than opioids. It confuses the heck out of many autocratic types, but it turns out that opioid addiction is a consequence of the War on Drugs at least as much as it is a consequence of the existence of drugs. But it was all in service to the cause of being able to lock up black people and hippies [cnn.com], so that makes it OK or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:17AM (5 children)
Gee. That's why we have no cannabinoids that are prescribeable. [drugabuse.gov] Absolutely none [wikipedia.org] at all [everydayhealth.com]. And of course there are no side effects to cannabis use at all [nih.gov], nosiree! Golly gosh, it's nice to have a drug that one can use with absolutely no concern as to the type of pain generated (as in where the pain is generated - by peripheral stimulation or deep nerve receptor) and just throw one thing at it.
It's a wonderful miracle drug that should be used to treat any and every conceivable problem known to medicine, and of course there are absolutely no money interests behind legalizing cannabis! What a wonderful world we live in to see a drug that just anybody can use! Why, it should be OTC because it's so harmless!
No, thanks. I'll take my common sense and ask my physician questions. I'll be concerned about addiction. And then, as I have in the past, I'll take the opioids when they are prescribed to me, as they are prescribed to me, and then I'll stop using them. (Or I'll take the Tylenol or NSAIDs that are prescribed instead). And what do you know? Just as I've been educated, I've never had physical dependence set in - just the samish very mild mental withdrawl that comes from when you stop any pain relief medicine because iit helped you feel better when you really needed it. And now you know your injuries have healed enough to come off them.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:51AM
All the long term side effects in that study you cited only affect children/teenagers. So in other words don't give drugs to kids. Seems plausible. On the other hand, opioids affect everyone, in many cases fatally.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 05 2019, @02:08AM (3 children)
You can just try aspirin, cannabis, or kratom for pain relief, and you probably won't have too many problems even if it doesn't work for you.
Try oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl, etc... not a good idea.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:24PM (1 child)
I've taken kratom for over ten years as a tonic. it NEVER was promoted for pain relief back before this opiate epidemic began. that only came about in recent years as part of a gold rush.
Knowing there is marketing that says on the website that it is a painkiller has provided no relief from pain. I still have to open the bottle of aspirin or ibuprofen just like I have always done.
I dont even know anyone in my clique that uses kratom that has experienced it relieving pain, not even as an unexpected side effect. we're all super pissed that its being promoted this way, and expect it'll get banned before long because of the unwanted attention and likely legal 'evidence' that will try to make it out to be an illegal pain relieving narcotic because everyone says so. All we need is a celebrity to mix it with some other drug and get hurt and it'll be all the fuse needed to set off that regulatory process.
It has been demonstrated to bind to receptors in the brain that also bind to opiates, but that doesn't make it an opiate in the same way that psilocin and psilociben are not SSRIs because they bind to serotonin receptors like Prozac and force regular serotonin molecules already in the brain to float around and wait for their turn to attach to the occupied receptors, preventing re-uptake.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 05 2019, @02:06PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_speciosa#Uses [wikipedia.org]
IDK, fam. But I haven't slept so I will defer to you for now.
Oh, and the ship has pretty much sailed for labeling it an opioid, no real evidence needed: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/02/11/0444249 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:33PM
I started to lay out the more severe side effects which can occur with each of those "not too many problems" drugs. But for once I don't want to seem pedantic. Suffice to say that each of them carries risks and each one can kill you in the right circumstances. (I'll call out that, in children, the risk of Reye's syndrome makes sweet little innocent aspirin contraindicated.) Just as opioids carry risks and can kill you in the right circumstances. And who *doesn't* know that opioids don't carry heavy side effects? That, plus the known addictive potential, is why they're schedule medications. That's why you don't just "try" opioids, and there is not an ethical health practitioner who thinks writing out a morphine prescription is the same as giving an aspirin. And why you can't just go up and buy a bottle of laudanum anymore, but rather need an independent trained individual to judge that the benefits of getting an opioid outweigh the risks of it. It's why there are protocols for pain assessment and ever growing knowledge as to how the body processes pain. And why every day ethical practitioners send some people home from the ER every single day with prescriptions for Tylenol regular, and not opioids.
Now... marijuana. It does have side effects, and those who blow them off undermine the case for using it. It is currently being hyped out of proportion to what it can actually do. It would be interesting, if it were possible, to try and quantify what the proportion of drug-seekers there are for opioids and marijuana. My hypothesis is that the latter is the far more numerous category. I'm just not sure how that gets tested other than qualitatively.
Pain control is a spectrum. Cannibinoids can indeed be a tool used in that box, and that's good. But it's one tool and the people who take care of you medically do have need for the whole box. And you should pay attention if your practitioner says you should be using the hammer this time instead of the screwdriver.
(And none of what I said excuses Purdue Pharma. That they misled those who take the toolbox out to do work with it means they should indeed be penalized. But a good jobber still needs good hammers in the toolbox instead of trying to set nails with pliers.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:16AM
I think that should be legal as well. I would imagine some people respond better to cannabis, some to opiates?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:55AM
He who has the gold buys the rules
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:11PM
Guggenheim Museum, so many New Yorkers protesting the horrible Sackler Family (murder by medicine). But, the story was censored by Soylent News Editors. With ZERO explanation. They don't need to explain, we know why they rejected that one. It didn't come from the Insider Elite. foxnews.com/us/protesters-stage-demonstration-at-guggenheim-museum-to-protest-family-accused-of-creating-opioid-crisis [foxnews.com]