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news.Purdue Pharma and three of its former executives have pleaded guilty to making misleading claims relating to the abuse risks of its painkiller Oxycontin.
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President and CEO Michael Friedman, vice president Howard Udell, and chief scientific officer Paul Goldenheim, will each make a payment and plead guilty to a single “strict liability” misdemeanor for misbranding. Purdue Pharma LP will pay $470 million to government agencies and $130 million to resolve private civil liabilities related to OxyContin tablets.
According to the Oregon Department of Justice, Purdue made false claims about the risks of addiction, abuse, withdrawal, and tolerance of Oxycontin compared to other pain medications.
Under the judgment, Purdue must also maintain an abuse and diversion-detection program that the company established internally to detect problem prescribing, and requires all field personnel to undergo training on the program before being allowed to promote OxyContin.
The company said: “We accept responsibility for those past misstatements and regret that they were made. During the past six years, we have implemented changes to our internal training, compliance and monitoring systems that seek to assure that similar events do not occur again. In July 2001, we added amplified warnings to the prescribing information and communicated those warnings to healthcare professionals.”