Recently-released documents in a lawsuit against Purdue reveal how the drugmaker marketed OxyContin, according to a STAT report.
Dr. Richard Sackler, who is a member of the family that controls Purdue, during a launch party for the drug in 1996 said the release of OxyContin would “be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”
According to the report, Sackler five years later outlined how the company could point the finger at people who became addicted to the painkillers to divert blame from itself amid growing concerns about the risk of addiction and overdoses involving opioids.
“We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible,” Sackler wrote in an email in 2001. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”
