OxyContin News

Oklahoma Lawmakers Grumble Openly about Opioid Settlement

OKLAHOMA CITY — A $270 million settlement between the state of Oklahoma and the maker of OxyContin praised last week as an innovative way to help combat opioid addiction is facing bipartisan criticism from Oklahoma lawmakers who say the state’s …

Sackler Family Asks Judge to Toss Massachusetts Opioid Suit

The billionaire family that owns Purdue Pharma LP says Massachusetts officials can’t prove that it or other directors masterminded the alleged illegal marketing of the company’s OxyContin painkiller. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s lawsuit, seeking to hold the Sacklers and …

N.Y. Accuses Opioid Maker Purdue of Illegal Fund Transfers to Sacklers

Purdue Pharma LP fraudulently transferred funds to members of the wealthy Sackler family who control the OxyContin maker despite knowing it faced major liabilities that had made it already insolvent, New York’s attorney general alleged on Thursday. New York Attorney …

Purdue to Pay $270M to Settle Okla. Opioid Lawsuit

Purdue Pharma LP and the Sackler family will pay $270 million to settle Oklahoma’s claims that illegal marketing of the Oxycontin painkiller devastated local communities, an accord that could influence the results of thousands of lawsuits faced by the company …

Sackler Family Accused in New Claim of Causing Opioid Crisis

The billionaire family that owns opioid-maker Purdue Pharma LP has been accused in a new lawsuit of causing the nationwide public-health crisis involving pain-killing medicines that has left thousands of Americans dead from overdoses. More than 500 U.S. cities and …

OxyContin Maker Will Stop Promoting Opioids to Physicians

The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said it will stop marketing opioid drugs to doctors, bowing to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the company for helping trigger the current drug abuse epidemic. OxyContin has long been the …

North Carolina Drug Control Bill Seeks to Add More Restrictions on Doctors, Pharmacists

North Carolina lawmakers can save patients’ lives, spare their families and combat an ongoing opioid-abuse crisis by putting tighter controls on physicians and pharmacists who hand out powerful pain-killing medicines, supporters of a drug control bill said Thursday. The plan …

Records Show West Virginia Flooded With Painkillers

Drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in just six years, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on these two painkillers, according to an investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail. That amounts to 433 of …

Pro-Painkiller Echo Chamber Shaped Policy Amid Drug Epidemic

For more than a decade, members of a little-known group called the Pain Care Forum have blanketed Washington with messages touting prescription painkillers‘ vital role in the lives of millions of Americans, creating an echo chamber that has quietly derailed …

Drug Manufacturers Fought Against State Opioid Limits Amid Crisis

The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids, the drugs at the heart of …