OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma to Plead Guilty to 3 Criminal Charges
WASHINGTON—Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller tha..
WASHINGTON—Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, Justice Department officials announced Wednesday.
The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said. The resolution will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court.
The deal does not release any of the company’s executives or owners—members of the wealthy Sackler family—from criminal liability, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. But one state attorney general said the agreement fails to hold the Sacklers accountable.
The settlement is the highest-profile display yet of the federal government seeking to hold a major drugmaker responsible for an opioid addiction and overdose crisis linked to more than 470,000 deaths in the country since 2000.
“Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice in the agreed statement of facts,” Steve Miller, who became chairman of the company’s board in 2018, said in a statement. No members of the Sackler family remain on that board, though they still own the company.
The deal comes less than 2 weeks before a presidential election where the opioid epidemic has taken a political back seat to the coronavirus pandemic and other issues. But it does give President Donald Trump’s administration an example of action on the addiction crisis, which he promised early in his term.
To Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the Justice Department “failed” and she said in a statement that she was not done with either Purdue or the Sacklers. “Justice in this case requires exposing the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable, not rushing a settlement to beat an election,” she said.
As part of the resolution, Purdue is admitting that it impeded the Drug Enforcement Administration by falsely representing that it had maintained an effective program to avoid drug diversion and by reporting misleading information to the agency to boost the company’s manufacturing quotas, the officials said.
A Justice Department official said Purdue had been representing to the DEA that it had “robust controls” to avoid opioid diversion but instead had been “disregarding red flags their own systems were sending up.”
Purdue is also admitting to violating federal anti-kickback laws by paying doctors, through a speaking program, to induce them to write more prescriptions for the company’s opioids and for using electronic health records software to influence the prescription of pain medication, according to the officials.
Purdue will make a direct payment to the government of $225 million, which is part of a larger $2 billion criminal forfeiture. In addition to that forfeiture, Purdue also faces a $3.54 billion criminal fine, though that money probably will not be fully collected because it will be taken through a bankruptcy, which includes a large number of other creditors. Purdue will also agree to $2.8 billion in damages to resolve its civil liability.
Purdue would transform into a public benefit company, meaning it would be governed by a trust that has to balance the trust’s interests against those of the American public and public health, the officials said. The Sacklers would not be involved in the new company and part of the money from the settlement would go to aid in medically assisted treatment and other drug programs to combat the opioid epidemic, the officials said. That arrangement mirrors a key element of the company’s proposal to settle about 3,000 lawsuits filed by state, local, and Native American tribal governments.
As part of the plea deal, the company admits it violated federal law and “knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet” the dispensing of medication from doctors “without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice,” according to a copy of the plea agreement obtained by the AP.
The company is also required to cooperate with the ongoing federal investigation and potential other prosecutions.
But even before the deal was announced, it was facing resistance from state attorneys general, Democratic members of Congress and advocates who wrote Attorney General William Barr asking him not to make the bargain with the company and the family. They said it does not hold them properly accountable and they raised concerns about some of the details.
“Millions of American families impacted by the opioid epidemic are looking to you and your department for justice. Justice for the sleepless nights spent worrying about sons and daughters trapped in the grip of substanceRead More – Source