Congress’ anti-opioid bills could be funded by the drugs that got us here
May 13, 2016, 5:50 AM | Updated: 8:35 am
(AP)
(AP)
Congress passed a series of bills this week to attack the prescription opioid epidemic, an epidemic which the LA Times says is at least partly due to a business decision.
Purdue Pharma was looking for a new money-maker, reporter Harriet Ryan explains.
Ryan said Purdue Pharma had a painkiller that was about to go off-patent, which meant a huge price drop. So in 1996, they tweaked an old painkiller to make it work for 12 hours and patented it as Oxycontin.
Related: The war on drugs seems to have failed … so now what?
There was just one problem: patients were complaining to their physicians it DID NOT work for 12 hours. In some cases, it wore off after six. So …
“What Purdue said to those physicians was don’t give it to them every six hours,” Ryan said. “They were saying just up the dose. We have internal documents that show that they were concerned that if doctors were prescribing the drug more frequently than every 12 hours, Purdue might lose its market share. Because the main selling point for the drug is it lasts 12 hours.”
So doctors just upped the dose. Because the drug is closely related to heroin, patients began getting addicted. Purdue claims it has done everything possible to discourage the addiction problem. But in any case, the drug certainly solved the revenue problem.
“Oxycontin has made Purdue $31 billion since 1996,” Ryan explains.
That brings us back to Congress, which is trying to agree on where to get the $725 million to pay for those anti-opioid bills they passed. After talking to Harriet Ryan, I have an idea where they might look.
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