Pike noted that the Sackler family was not named in the Oklahoma suit, which Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter filed in 2017. However, the family has been directly named in a number of other lawsuits across the country.
It is for healthcare providers to make decisions about whether OxyContin or any other drug is appropriate for an individual patient.Purdue pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges of illegally misbranding OxyContin by failing to alert doctors that it was stronger than morphine. The company was forced to pay $600 million in fines and penalties.
A 1997 email exchange between Richard Sackler and Michael Friedman, Purdue’s marketing chief at the time, outlined the company’s efforts to understate the product’s effects in marketing it to physicians. The Sackler family insists Purdue Pharma’s settlement with Oklahoma earlier this week “does not amount to an acceptance of responsibility by the family for the opioid crisis in the U.S., nor is it expressly or impliedly an admission of any wrong-doing on their part.” one of its radio shows conducted with Nan Goldin, an American photographer and activist.