Biotech Values

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THE STREET..."Hillbilly Heroin"

http://www.therapeuticsdaily.com/news/article.cfm?contenttype=sentryarticle&contentvalue=1360149...

THE US Justice Department has finally found a worthy cause in its crusade against corporations -- those evil drug companies.

Unlike online gambling companies and some of the high-spending execs that have been targeted for prosecution during the Bush Administration, evil really fits the new enemy of the American Government.

Federal prosecutors struck last week with a knockout punch that would give Oscar De La Hoya a case of the green-eyed monster when the pharma that makes the painkiller OxyContin pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay $600 million in fines.

Purdue Pharma copped the massive criminal fine -- one of the largest ever issued in the history of the pharmaceutical industry -- in order to resolve a charge that it had misbranded OxyContin, a powerful narcotic that in America is known as Hillbilly Heroin.

Misbranding in the case of OxyContin is a shocking example of corporate malfeasance, which would strike many people who live outside of the maze of US healthcare as absolutely improbable.

For the past decade, the drug, which is up there with crystal meth as a cause of crime and death in rural parts of the US, has overwhelmed doctors, emergency rooms and lawmakers who all are struggling with how to deal with the dramatic rise in addicts.

The narcotic's most famous victim was right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh, who had to enter rehab after he was caught buying large quantities of the drug on the black market in 2003.

OxyContin's toll on places like Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas is so pronounced that it has almost become as common a stereotype as fried chicken in the south.

That's why it makes it completely unbelievable that back in 1995 Purdue Pharma aggressively marketed the drug to physicians as less addictive than other opiates, such as Percocet and Vicodin.

In a $1 billion marketing strategy, executives at the pharmaceutical decided it was vital for their sales reps to convince doctors weary of painkiller addictions that OxyContin was less prone to abuse because of a time-released formula.

The problem was these executives knew that wasn't true, yet it didn't stop them from making up misleading scientific charts for reps to carry around the country on their promotional tours.

In total, the OxyContin non-addictive campaign netted Purdue Pharma $2.8 billion between its launch in 1995 and 2001, when under threat of regulatory scrutiny the company dropped its marketing campaign.

It's a sad indictment on the Food and Drug Administration that the marketing campaign was allowed to go on for so many years and affect so many people without the regulator ever testing Purdue Pharma's claims.

But that shouldn't take away from the prosecutors win and the lesson it will offer any drug company that thinks it can get away with false advertising.

In a country where court actions are as common as a cold, some may question how bad can a misbranding charge really be?

The answer is not just $600 million, but the onslaught of lawsuits from OxyContin addicts that are sure to follow now that they have a criminal judgment in their favour.

It's just a pity they had to become addicts in the first place.