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Tag: opioid marketing

  • Expert: Johnson & Johnson Played Bigger Role In Opioid Crisis Than Purdue Pharma

    Expert: Johnson & Johnson Played Bigger Role In Opioid Crisis Than Purdue Pharma

    Johnson & Johnson is less well-known as an opioid manufacturer, but the company makes Duragesic, a fentanyl patch, and produced Nucynta, an opioid, until 2015.

    The company may be best-known for its sweet-smelling baby washes and lotion, but Johnson & Johnson has a sinister side, according to an expert witness who said that the company may have played an even bigger role in the opioid epidemic than Purdue Pharma. 

    Johnson & Johnson “did everything it possibly could to get doctors to prescribe more and more opioids,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, according to Bloomberg. 

    “In some ways,” the company was “worse” than Purdue, Kolodny said, according to CNN. 

    Kolodny was speaking as an expert witness for the state of Oklahoma, which is suing Johnson & Johnson for contributing to the opioid epidemic. The state previously reached settlements with Purdue Pharma for $270 million and with Teva Pharmaceuticals for $85 million, although neither company admitted to wrongdoing. 

    Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has become well-known for its deceptive marketing practices and lavish rewards to doctors who prescribed lots of opioid pills. The Sackler family, members of whom own the company, have been vilified for what many see as their active management of misinformation. 

    Johnson & Johnson is less well-known as an opioid manufacturer, but the company makes Duragesic, a fentanyl patch, and produced the opioid pill Nucynta until 2015, when it sold the product for $1 billion. Johnson & Johnson had products that were natural, semi-synthetic and synthetic opioids, meaning it was active in many spaces around opioid marketing. 

    “Until I had an opportunity to review discovery documents I really was not aware of how bad Johnson & Johnson was,” Kolodny said. 

    When he had tried to visit Tasmanian Alkaloids, a former subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, Kolodny said it was “clear” that the company did not want him around. Kolodny also said that despite the fact that he has played a prevalent role in crafting opioid policy in response to the epidemic, no one from Johnson & Johnson ever reached out to him. 

    Despite the state’s assertion that Johnson & Johnson contributed to opioid abuse in Oklahoma, the company continues to deny responsibility. 

    “The testimony of the State’s witness, Dr. Kolodny, was filled with rampant speculation and conclusions not derived from facts,” the company’s attorney John Sparks said in a statement. “The evidence remains that Johnson & Johnson and its former subsidiaries appropriately and responsibly met all laws and regulations on the manufacturing, sale and distribution of active pharmaceutical ingredients and pharmaceutical products and did everything you’d expect a responsible company to do.”

    However, Kolodny maintained that the public needs to know about the role that Johnson & Johnson and other manufacturers played in the opioid crisis. 

    “All of that helped change the attitudes in this country about smoking,” he said. “I believe we can see the same benefit [from] opioid litigation.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Lawsuits Pile Up Against Family Behind Purdue Pharma

    Opioid Lawsuits Pile Up Against Family Behind Purdue Pharma

    A string of lawsuits seeks to hold the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, responsible for the opioid crisis.

    The Sackler family is withdrawing from the public sphere, including ending their philanthropic initiatives, as legal pressure rises to hold them responsible for the opioid crisis.

    Their charity arm, the Sackler Trust, has historically donated millions but announced it was ceasing all such activity now that they’re receiving bad press and alleging that “false allegations” are being made against them.

    “The current press attention that these legal cases in the United States is generating has created immense pressure on the scientific, medical, educational and arts institutions here in the U.K., large and small, that I am so proud to support. This attention is distracting them from the important work that they do,” said Sackler Trust chairwoman Theresa Sackler. “The Trustees of the Sackler Trust have taken the difficult decision to temporarily pause all new philanthropic giving, while still honoring existing commitments. I remain fully committed to all the causes the Sackler Trust supports, but at this moment it is the better course for the Trust to halt all new giving until we can be confident that it will not be a distraction for institutions that are applying for grants.”

    Purdue Pharma is the manufacturer of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, a drug for which they stand accused of downplaying the negative effects of while encouraging doctors to prescribe as much as possible in the name of profit.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control, opioids caused about 218,000 American deaths between 1999 and 2017. A recent study found that people are now more likely die from an opioid overdose than in a car accident. The Sacklers say they recognize that action needs to be taken.

    “We recognize that more needs to be done and that’s why we launched a long-term initiative that continues to build as we pursue a range of solutions that we believe will have a meaningful impact,” wrote Theresa Sackler.

    The Sacklers have suspended a $1.3 million grant to the United Kingdom’ National Portrait Gallery as to “avoid being a distraction.” Some other organizations, like the art gallery Tate, the Guggenheim, and the hedge fund Hildene Capital Management, have cut ties to the Sacklers preemptively.

    “The weight on my conscience led me to terminate the relationship,” said hedge fund manager Brett Jefferson.

    Some have called for removing the Sacklers’ name from buildings they funded, including Harvard University’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which were funded by the Sacklers long before the invention of OxyContin. Spokespeople for both museums have said they are not going to remove the Sackler name from their buildings.

    “Museums (are) white washing the reputation of a family that is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people … But the tide is turning against them,” said L.A. Kauffman of accountability group Sackler PAIN.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Insys Execs Used Rap Video To Push Higher Doses Of Fentanyl Spray

    Insys Execs Used Rap Video To Push Higher Doses Of Fentanyl Spray

    The sales video parodied A$AP Rocky’s hit single “F—in’ Problems.”

    Jurors for a racketeering, fraud and conspiracy trial in Boston involving former Insys Therapeutics CEO John Kapoor saw a sales video made by the pharmaceutical manufacturer that showed company employees rapping about increasing prescription dosages and dancing with an individual dressed as a bottle of its powerful fentanyl spray Subys.

    Kapoor and four other former Insys managers and executives are accused of conspiring to pay doctors in exchange for prescriptions for Subsys, a fentanyl-based medication intended for use by cancer patients with severe pain. Kapoor and the other defendants have denied the charges.

    In the video, a parody of A$AP Rocky’s 2012 single “F—in Problems” which prosecutors said was shown during a national sales meeting in 2015, salesmen and other individuals rap about “titration,” a process by which employees persuade medical professionals to increase the strength of a prescription until their patients reach a certain dosage.

    At one point in the video, the person dressed as a Subsys bottle – which is notated with 1,600 micrograms, its highest dosage – is reportedly revealed to be Insys’ then-vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff.  

    In November 2018, Burlakoff pled guilty to a charge of racketeering conspiracy, and according to NBC News, is expected to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against Kapoor.

    Another former Insys executive, ex-CEO Michael Babich, testified during the current trial that Kapoor encouraged employees to push for high dosages of Subsys so they would continue taking the drug.

    Attorneys for Kapoor claimed that Burlakoff was the architect of the kickback scheme, which according to CBS News, handed out more than $2 million to 18,000 doctors in 2016 alone.

    Kapoor’s lawyers also alleged that Burlakoff and Babich sought to reduce their sentences by providing false testimony against Kapoor, and have claimed that prosecutors have tried to link Insys to the national opioid crisis, noting that Subsys represents a fraction of the prescription opioid market

    Prosecutors, however, claim that Kapoor personally recruited physicians through expensive dinners and high-payment speaking engagements in order to ensure their commitment to higher dosages of Subsys. Kapoor, who resigned from Insys’ board of directors in 2017 after being arrested, along with Burlakoff, for their role in the kickback scheme on the same day that President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.

    Subsys, which is reportedly 100 times stronger than morphine, has been alleged to have played a role in hundreds of overdose deaths since the Food and Drug Administration approved it for use as cancer treatment for breakthrough pain in 2012. The drug, which helped to make Insys the best performing public offering in 2013, is now one of several opioid-related assets for which Insys Therapeutics, Inc., is currently seeking a buyer.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Big Pharma's Payments To Doctors Affected Overdose Deaths

    How Big Pharma's Payments To Doctors Affected Overdose Deaths

    A new study examined the link between large payments and gifts to doctors from pharma companies and overdose deaths.

    In counties and states where opioid manufacturers offered large payments or gifts to doctors to promote their product, a new study has suggested that both opioid prescriptions and opioid-related overdose deaths were higher than in other areas.

    Coverage of the study in The New York Times showed that the study culled information from a variety of sources, including the Open Payments database, which tracks payments by pharmaceutical companies to doctors, and data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

    Information from these sources suggested that spending on physicians was most highly concentrated in the Northeastern United States, where certain cities and counties claim some of the highest overdose death rates in the country.

    The study, conducted by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center and New York University School of Medicine, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, filtered data from the aforementioned national databases through three criteria: total dollar value of marketing efforts by companies spent on doctors, number of payments and number of physicians that received any marketing. 

    According to the researchers, the pharmaceutical industry spent approximately $40 million promoting their opioid products to nearly 68,000 doctors between 2013 and 2015. The marketing efforts included paid meals, trips and consulting fees.

    By referencing overdose data and opioid prescription numbers from the CDC, they determined that for every three additional payments made to doctors per 100,000 people in a county, overdose deaths involving prescription opioids would rise 18% over a year’s time.

    Marketing to doctors dropped significantly in the period immediately following the years included in the study by 33%, which The New York Times attributed to public pressure on companies after the opioid epidemic began reaching critical levels.

    Cities and counties in the Northeastern US that received some of the largest payments also had some of the highest overdose rates, including Salem and Fredericksburg in Virginia, Cabell County in West Virginia and Lackawanna County in Pennsylvania.

    As The New York Times noted, the study authors also suggested that the number of interactions such as free meals appeared to be more strongly linked to overdose deaths than the amount spent on such interactions. 

    “Each meal seems to be associated with more and more prescriptions,” said study lead author Dr. Scott Hadland of Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction. Hadland and his co-authors also wrote that the study did have limitations: They were unable to differentiate between overdose deaths involving prescribed opioids and those caused by painkillers obtained through illegal means.

    “We acknowledge that our work describes only one part of the very complex opioid overdose crisis in this country,” said Hadland. “Even still, prescription opioids remain involved in one-third of all opioid overdose deaths, and are commonly the first medications that people encounter before transitioning to heroin or fentanyl. It is critical that we take measures now to prevent marketing from unnecessarily exposing new people to opioids they may not need.”

    View the original article at thefix.com