Purdue Pharma
Purdue Pharma L.P., formerly the Purdue Frederick Company, was an American privately held pharmaceutical company founded by John Purdue Gray. It was sold to Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler in 1952, and then owned principally by the Sackler family and their descendants.
The company manufactured pain medicines such as hydromorphone, fentanyl, codeine, hydrocodone and oxycodone, also known by its brand name, OxyContin. The Sacklers developed aggressive marketing tactics persuading doctors to prescribe OxyContin in particular. Doctors were enticed with free trips to pain-management seminars and paid speaking engagements. Sales of their drugs soared, as did the number of people dying from overdoses.
A series of lawsuits followed. In 2007, Purdue paid out one of the largest fines ever levied against a pharmaceutical firm for misleading the public about how addictive the drug OxyContin was compared to other pain medications. In response to the lawsuits, the company shifted its focus to abuse-deterrent formulations, but continued to market and sell opioids as late as 2019 and continued to be involved in lawsuits around the opioid epidemic in the United States.
Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2019, in New York City. On October 21, 2020, it was reported that Purdue had reached a settlement potentially worth US$8.3 billion, admitting that it "knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet" doctors dispensing medication "without a legitimate medical purpose." Members of the Sackler family would additionally pay US$225 million and the company would close.
Some state attorneys general protested the plan. In March 2021, the United States House of Representatives introduced a bill that would stop the bankruptcy judge in the case from granting members of the Sackler family legal immunity during the bankruptcy proceedings. The House Judicial Committee referred it to the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law in October 2021. The bill lapsed at the end of the 117th Congress in January 2023. In September 2021, Purdue Pharma announced that it would rebrand itself as Knoa Pharma.
As of August 2023, Purdue Pharma remains in chapter 11 bankruptcy, pending a Department of Justice appeal to the United States Supreme Court, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling that the bankruptcy proceedings may continue.
The company's downfall was the subject of the 2021 Hulu miniseries Dopesick, the 2021 HBO film The Crime of the Century, the 2023 Netflix series Painkiller, and several documentaries and books.
Purdue Pharma had no relation to Purdue University or the Purdue University College of Pharmacy, something Purdue University has made clear on multiple occasions to avoid association.
History
The company that became Purdue Pharma was founded in 1892 by medical doctors John Purdue Gray and George Frederick Bingham in New York City as the Purdue Frederick Company. The company made a tonic compound made with sherry and glycerin. Sixty years later, in 1952, the company was sold to three other medical doctors, brothers Arthur Mitchell Sackler, Raymond Sackler, and Mortimer David Sackler, who relocated the business to Yonkers, New York. The brothers all held a one-third share in the company, but Arthur's share passed to his brothers after his death in 1987. Mortimer died in 2010, followed by Raymond in 2017. Under the Sacklers, the company opened additional offices in New Jersey and Connecticut. The headquarters are located in Stamford, Connecticut.The modern company, Purdue Pharma L.P., was incorporated in 1991 and focused on pain management medication, calling itself a "pioneer in developing medications for reducing pain, a principal cause of human suffering". In 1984, its extended-release formulation of morphine, MS Contin was released. OxyContin was released in 1996 after Curtis Wright, an employee of the Food and Drug Administration approved its use on a 12-hour dosage cycle. Starting in 1998, Purdue Pharma secured longterm deals with several Johnson & Johnson companies to supply the raw materials for their opioid products. Around the time of OxyContin's release, the American Pain Society introduced its "pain as fifth vital sign" campaign. Veterans Health Administration adopted the campaign as its national pain management strategy.
In September 2015, the company's website said it had some 1,700 people on its payroll. That same month, the company announced it would acquire VM Pharma in the process gaining access to worldwide development and commercial rights to an allosteric selective tropomyosin receptor kinase inhibitor program, i.e., the Phase II candidate VM-902A. The deal could have generated more than US$213 million for VM Pharma.
Financial worth
OxyContin became a blockbuster drug. "Between 1995 and 2001, OxyContin brought in $2.8 billion in revenue for Purdue Pharma." Cumulative revenues had increased to US$31 billion by 2016 and US$35 billion by 2017. All of the company's profits go to Sackler family trusts and entities. According to a 2017 article in The New Yorker, Purdue Pharma is "owned by one of America's richest families, with a collective net worth of thirteen billion dollars". Many US states allege the family is worth more than $13 billion.Philanthropy
In 2016, Forbes magazine listed the Sacklers as one of the 20 wealthiest families in the U.S. and noted that the Sacklers have contributed money to museums, universities and cultural institutions around the world. However, the Purdue website makes little mention of anyone in the Sackler family or their ownership of the company. Allen Frances, former chair of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, said: “Their name has been pushed forward as the epitome of good works and of the fruits of the capitalist system. But, when it comes down to it, they’ve earned this fortune at the expense of millions of people who are addicted. It’s shocking how they have gotten away with it.”Structure
The company's branches include Purdue Pharma L.P., The Purdue Frederick Company, Purdue Pharmaceutical Products L.P., and Purdue Products L.P.Its manufacturing takes place at three sites: Purdue Pharmaceuticals L.P., a plant located in Wilson, North Carolina; the P.F. Laboratories, Inc., in Totowa, New Jersey; and Rhodes Technologies L.P., in Coventry, Rhode Island. Purdue Pharma L.P. also has research labs in Cranbury, New Jersey. OxyContin is currently distributed throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Distribution takes place from the P.F. Laboratories in Totowa, New Jersey.
Rhodes Pharmaceuticals is a sister company that was established in Rhode Island in 2007. The company is one of the largest producers of off-patent generic opioids in the US. Sister companies to Purdue that are also controlled by descendants of the Sackler brothers are Napp Pharmaceuticals in the United Kingdom and Mundipharma that are selling opioids globally.
New drugs are being developed under other company names, such as Adlon Therapeutics and Imbrium. Both are based in the same building as their parent company in downtown Stamford and share employees.
Management
, the son of Raymond Sackler, started work at the company in 1971. He was named president in 1999 and became co-chairman of the board in 2003. Richard oversaw the research department that developed OxyContin and managed the sales and marketing unit.Craig Landau was appointed CEO on June 22, 2017. He joined Purdue Pharma L.P. in 1999 and was chief medical officer and as vice president of R&D innovation, clinical and medical affairs. In 2013, he was appointed president and CEO of Purdue Pharma.
In 2018, eight members of the Sackler family were listed as active or former members of the board of directors. Steve Miller became chairman in July 2018. By early 2019, the Sacklers had departed the Purdue Pharma board, leaving a board of five members.
Potential for abuse
Purdue Pharma manufactures pain medicines such as hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine, and hydrocodone. It makes drugs such as MS Contin, OxyContin, and Ryzolt. In 1972, Contin was developed. The most commonly abused medications that the company produces are MS Contin and OxyContin. Both can be abused by crushing, chewing, snorting, or injecting the dissolved product. These ingestion methods create a significant risk to the abuser; they can result in overdose and death. Drug-seeking tactics that addicts undergo to obtain the medication include "doctor shopping", which is visiting a number of different physicians to obtain additional prescriptions and refusal to follow up with appropriate examinations, using "pill mills", and prescriber practices with lax controls. Along with the high potential for abuse among people without prescriptions, there is also a risk for physical dependency and reduced reaction or drug desensitization for patients that are prescribed them. Nevertheless, strong analgesic drugs remain indispensable to patients with severe acute and cancer pain.Marketing strategy
FDA approval
The first step in the marketing strategy was to seek approval to sell OxyContin from the Food and Drug Administration. Purdue managed to get it approved in 1995, even though no long-term studies and no assessment of its addictive capabilities had been conducted. Approval to prescribe OxyContin for "moderate to severe pain" was granted by Dr Curtis Wright IV, the medical review officer for the FDA. According to Purdue documents in a review conducted in 2006 by the Justice Department, Wright met with Purdue Pharma representatives in a hotel room near the FDA offices in Rockville, Maryland, between January 31 to February 2, 1995. He allowed the company to help draft his medical officer's review of OxyContin for the FDA, which included approving the wording of certain texts to be used in OxyContin's package insert, or label. Wright resigned from the FDA a year later, and was subsequently employed as a consultant at Purdue with a substantially higher salary.The information label approved by the FDA contained the text "Delayed absorption, as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug." The ambiguous text "is believed to reduce the abuse liability" became a key issue in subsequent lawsuits against Purdue and was quoted in the 2007 felony conviction of the company for criminal misbranding. David Kessler, FDA commissioner at the time, later said of the approval of OxyContin: "No doubt it was a mistake. It was certainly one of the worst medical mistakes, a major mistake."