OxyContin’s global drive: ‘We’re only just getting started’
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
OxyContin is a dying business in America.
With the nation in the grip of an opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the U.S. medical establishment is turning away from painkillers. Top health officials are discouraging primary-care doctors from prescribing them for chronic pain, saying there is no proof that they work long-term and substantial evidence that they put patients at risk.
Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost revenue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.
So the company’s owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the painkiller that set off the U.S. opioid crisis into medicine cabinets around the world.
Source: Duluth News Tribune (link opens in a new window)
- Categories
- Health Care
