How one family made a fortune from the opioid crisis in the United States

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The Slacker family are world famous and respected philanthropists. In the British Museum in London, in the Paris Louvre and the New York Metropolitan Museum halls are named after them, their names can be found in the names of educational programs and laboratories of dozens of institutes and research centers in several countries.

But the Slackers don't like to talk about the family business - Purdue pharma, And for this there are reasons, writes Republic.

Pharmaceutical company Slacker developed an anesthetic drug, oxycontin, which brought about $ 35 billion to it. The active ingredient of the drug is oxycodone, a relative of heroin, which appeared in Germany in 1916 year and is almost two times stronger than morphine.

Previously, because of concerns related to their narcotic properties, doctors prescribed such powerful drugs to patients only in the event of acute pain in the later stages of cancer. But Purdue pharma managed to present her medicine as a medical breakthrough, capable of safely and without causing dependence relieving moderate and severe pain. Thanks to her efforts, OxyContin was prescribed for a wide range of conditions to millions of patients.

As a result, the drug led to the deaths of thousands of people. Since 1999, oxycontin and other prescription opioids have caused 200 overdose to kill thousands of people in the United States.

From the materials of the lawsuits against Purdue it follows that death from painkillers has become very common: 29% of Americans admit that they or their relatives know someone who died as a result of taking oxycontin.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 145 Americans die every day from an overdose of opioids.

The company was founded by three brothers - Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, children of Jewish immigrants who grew up in New York. All three received medical degrees and worked in psychiatry.

In 1952, the Slackers bought a small New York medical company. Purdue frederickwhich made laxatives and ear cleansers. Top of 1960 Purdue frederick has grown a lot.

The eighties were marked for the Slackers' company (now bearing the name Purdue pharma) the success of the first painkiller-hit - containing morphine tablets MS Continthat had a “controlled release” mechanism: the drug entered the bloodstream within a few hours. This medicine has become the most sold in the history of the company.

However, at the end of the patent term 1980 MS Contin had to expire, and the manufacturer began to look for what can replace the super successful drug. So the brothers turned to oxycodone.

It was inexpensive to manufacture and was already used by pharmaceuticals: there were Percodan (a mixture of oxycodone with aspirin) and Percocet (mixture with Tylenol). Purdue decided to create her own version of the drug, combining oxycodone with her “controlled release” formula; it was decided to produce the medicine in different dosages: from 10 mg of active ingredient to much stronger 80 and 100 mg. Such dosages exceeded everything that was on the painkiller market at that moment.

In 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved oxycontin for sale, although the manufacturer did not submit any studies on drug addiction.

The launch of the drug was accompanied by one of the largest marketing campaigns in the history of pharmaceuticals. On Purdue there were a thousand sales representatives who proved to the doctors the advantages of the new medicine and convinced them that it could be prescribed not only to alleviate acute short-term pain, but also in chronic cases. The list of evidence that offered Purdue, was almost endless. At the same time, doctors perceived the new drug as less powerful than morphine, and although Purdue understood this, the manufacturer used the delusion to their advantage.

Thousands of doctors were invited to conferences, handed out all sorts of gifts with symbols of medicine and showed videos of grateful patients who have nothing else to hurt.

In the first five years after the start of sales, oxycontin brought the manufacturer a billion dollars a year, and there were no signs of a cooling market.

Thanks to the “gradual release” formula, the drug lasted for a long time, and the company relied on it in marketing: advertising promised that it was possible to take one large dose once per 12 hours instead of more frequent and weaker doses of other medicines. However, in practice, in half of the patients, the analgesic effect did not last 12, but 8 hours, after which they began to experience pain and the need for a new dose of medication. When doctors began to report symptoms of withdrawal in their patients, representatives Purdue advised to solve the problem by increasing the dosage.

Almost immediately after OxyContin entered the market, indications appeared that patients were abusing it. It turned out that if the tablets were rubbed and inhaled or prepared for injection with water, the mechanism of the gradual action of the opioid was disturbed, and the drug worked like a normal opioid drug.

The company, however, did not recall the medication and did not recognize that it could be addictive, instead Purdue accused patients of misuse of the drug.

Since Purdue pharma began to produce oxycontin, thousands of lawsuits were filed against her. Sometimes the company declares that it has not lost a single case regarding its odious drug, but the other wording will be more correct: in no case did the proceedings reach a public hearing, since agreements were concluded.

In August 2010 years Purdue quietly replaced oxycontin with slightly different medicine and patented a new formula. This version of the drug with a modified composition was approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the USA. The patent for the original oxycontin expired in the year 2013, and Purdue brought the updated drug to eliminate competitors in the form of generics.

The original formula of the drug has created a generation dependent on drugs, and the modified one has put a new generation on heroin. The study of the group of economists is called "How a change in the formula oxycontin caused a heroin epidemic": A survey of 244 people undergoing treatment due to the abuse of oxycontin (after changing its formula) revealed that 70% had switched to heroin, and the rest to other drugs.

Now Purdue pharma recognizes the crisis of opium addiction, but claims that she has taken all possible steps to prevent it, in addition, the company emphasizes that there are other painkillers on the market.

As American politicians and journalists began to pay attention to the opioid crisis, some doctors stopped prescribing opioid painkillers. In his official statement Purdue recognized that oxycontin can cause physical dependence in some patients, but stressed that this condition cannot be equated to dependence.

Despite all the critics' objections, in August 2015 Purdue received permission from the FDA to sell oxycontin to children since 11 years. 2006 to 2015 years Purdue and other pain killer manufacturers have spent almost $ 900 million on lobbying their interests - 8 times more than the gun lobby in the same period.

On evaluation ForbesThe Slacker family continues to receive approximately $ 700 million per year from their businesses. After OxyContin sales in the United States stopped growing, Purdue began to conquer the world - from Canada and the UK. Interests in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East Purdue represents a company associated with it Mundipharma. In China and Brazil, where opioids are still stigmatized, the marketing strategy Mundipharma remains the same as u Purdue in the USA in 90's. In Russia, the circulation of the main substance of the anesthetic, oxycodone, and the preparations containing it was banned, but in 2006, the Russian authorities softened to it and transferred it to the list of substances whose circulation is permitted, but controlled.

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