Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin in 1996, and soon began an aggressive marketing campaign for this powerful and addictive drug. The campaign is over, but its effects are still deadly.
How do we know this?
“Because Purdue’s marketing wasn’t sprinkled evenly around the country. Instead, Purdue rolled out its campaign in different markets at different times and with different intensities, meaning we can compare what has been happening across early vs. late markets. By “we,” I mean Julia Dennett and Gregg Gonsalvez from Yale University (an obscure little college in Connecticut, I believe). They conducted an ingenious study in which they compared what happened to people following this marketing campaign as a function of how aggressively Purdue marketed the drug in their location. Specifically, they looked at a predictable (and life-threatening) complication of drug addiction – infections caused by non-sterile needles.
“Aggressive” is an understatement. This is a pharmaceutical company that paid doctors and even had its own mascot.
Why would marketing of a prescription pill lead to an increase in the use of illegal, injection drugs?
The story unfolds as follows. Purdue marketed the drug, those marketing practices leading to higher prescription rates in locations targeted by the campaign. Oxycontin is a slow-release drug. But back in the late ’90s, people could crush the pills, turning a slow-release narcotic into a rapidly acting drug, a snort or injection leading to an intense high.
Then, in 2010, the company began selling a less crushable version of the drug. As a result, people could not easily get high off their prescription pills anymore. Some of those people turned to street narcotics.
The result was an increase in injection-related infections due to use of contaminated needles. The Yale study shows that those infections occurred, disproportionately, in locations where Purdue marketed the drug most aggressively.
Did Purdue know this would happen? After all, addicts need to get their hit somewhere. And if Purdue knew it was likely to happen, did they care or were they more interested in protecting themselves?
Something to remember: OxyContin has been called ‘heroin in a pill’. The association between childhood trauma and heroin addiction is as strong as the association between food addiction and obesity.
The reason I mention this is because doctors were told they had to stop prescribing OxyContin to patients, with predictable results. Or, to put another another way, instead of preventing harm the War on Drugs created a new kind of heroin addict.
[…] It is difficult to overstate how tragic this situation is. Aggressive marketing of Oxycontin led to millions of people becoming addicted to narcotics. Three decades later, people are still dying.
It’s a tragedy of epic proportions. In fact it’s not possible to look at drug abuse in the United States without considering the role the opioid crisis has played (the US seems to be currently going through a third wave, but don’t quote me on that).
The correct treatment for addiction is a slow-weaning process under professional medical supervision. Here I’m talking about actual addiction, not that you’ve just gotten into a bad habit (in which case a little self-discipline is in order). Oh, and rehab doesn’t work. Just sayin’.
Will it happen here? Probably. Eventually. So far we’ve been lucky. Very lucky.
And when it does will we be prepared? Definitely.
Yeah right.
