Brian Mann
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Purdue Pharma marketed OxyContin aggressively in ways the company later admitted were criminal, pleading guilty to federal charges twice.
As part of the bankruptcy settlement, the firm's longtime owners, members of the Sackler family, will now lose all ownership and control.
In a statement, New York State Attorney General Letitia James said the company that put profits over people is now shut down forever.
Purdue Pharma's operations have been reorganized into a new non-profit called NOAA Pharma.
NOAA will operate under close government oversight and is barred from lobbying activities.
The Sacklers, who have never admitted wrongdoing, are expected to make their first settlement installment payment of $1.5 billion before the end of this year.
Attorney General Todd Blanch praised yesterday's fine for Purdue Pharma.
He called it a prime example of the Justice Department's effort to redress past wrongs.
The company admitted misleading the public about the safety of OxyContin and to paying doctors to over-prescribe opioid medications.
Critics, including Ed Bish, who lost his son to an OxyContin overdose, are angry the DOJ didn't bring charges against company executives.
Members of the Sackler family who own the company say they did nothing wrong and they've never been charged with any crime.
Purdue Pharma is now expected to finalize a much larger federal bankruptcy settlement worth roughly $7.4 billion.
Fatal street drug overdoses have been plummeting, reaching their lowest levels in more than half a decade, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But street drug experts like Ed Sisco with the National Institute of Standards and Technology worry a new wave of synthetic chemicals being added to street drugs is heightening the danger again.
Once a month or once every other month, we're encountering something that we've never seen before and we haven't seen indications of it being seen in the United States before either.
Officials have issued warnings about a dangerous sedative called metatomidine that's causing heart ailments in people who use street drugs and a synthetic opioid more powerful than fentanyl called cyclophene linked to recent overdose deaths in South Carolina and Tennessee.