Pharmaceutical companies like Purdue have received a lot of criticism over the years for the way that they go about marketing their products.
They've faced repeated accusations that they have knowingly and purposefully misled doctors about their products like Oxycontin, being too eager to allegedly overstate their benefits while downplaying any possible worries.
And Purdue, which is one of the biggest pharma companies in the world, has recently announced that it they are going to cut their US sales staff and stop marketing its Oxycontin to doctors in the U.S.
To date, OxyContin is known as one of the top selling opioid painkillers in the world and it's contributed to the addiction habits and the deaths of many.
Previously released Purdue memos indicate that the sales agents were focused on pushing for sales of OxyContin at least 70 percent of the time that they were out there selling to doctors.
Purdue says that it has already started to cut back on its sales staff and they won't be keeping up with their traditional tactic of having sales reps go to doctor offices around the US in order to try and get them to opt for choosing opioid drugs for their patients.
Purdue has previously acknowledged that they did exaggerate the safety claims for the OxyContin and former executives have even plead guilty in the matter, for having misled the public about the benefits and risks that were related to this painkiller.
Despite perhaps alleviating some of the selling pressure on that painkiller, the company is still expected to continue making and selling the drug.
Pics:
Toby Talbot/AP via boston globe
pixabay
Sources:
http://fortune.com/2018/02/11/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-doctors-marketing/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/purdue-oxycontin-statement-1.4530426
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/08/restore-crucial-funds-drug-control-agency/MSiUEJ6W1zdvKyHw4A3owN/story.html
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/10/health-care/uncertain-hour/oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-stop-marketing-opioids-doctors
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https://steemit.com/cannabis/@doitvoluntarily/big-pharma-funding-cannabis-opposition
Oh great PR Jack for those fuckheads. Twenty somethin years later, millions dead and millions more lives ruined including many of my loved ones. Fuck Purdue. Sorry my comment isn't as intellectually mature as I usually try to be. FUCK. PURDUE.
The feeling is understandable, most especially when it has ruined someone's life close to you.
Many times I have seriously thought about telling the public the truth of why healthcare in India is in a dismal state. But then, I realize that people are too immature to understand. What's the point?
It really feels helpless for sure... I often feel overwhelmed at all of the forces working against us, the programming is so subtle yet so powerful that their minds just shut off from you. Big Pharma is just one of many topics that has a knee-jerk reaction of closemindedness, but the damage they have been causing has affected nearly everyone in Canada/US . The growth of the cannabis movement in North America is one of many indicators that the people are getting fed up
@shahaan I am curious about Big Pharmas presence in India. Is it expanding? You must have a lot of new people entering a more westernized healthcare system, it would be interesting to look at how that has been unfolding. What about Cannabis in India? what is it like there or does it depend on region, social status, education. Also how long has Big Pharma had a big presence in India, and is it expanding? It's really interesting to hear about how other cultures deal with these changes.
yeah, and it's not like they were unaware, they knew what they were doing just like big tobacco knew what they were doing a few decades ago - they suppressed the research and then aggressively marketed it.
@cannabiscanada, i sure understand how you feel. After making 35B dolls? they are just coming to realize the damage they have done? the innocent lives wasted? the addiction many are battling with? they are really crazy.
What's going to happen to all the military we have guarding the poppy fields if sales drop? Unexpected consequences...
Yes, indeed @fitinfun ... it's a tangled web of backhanders and deceit. I don't believe for one minute that any of it is an accident and I'm SURE those who are supposed to regulate and protect overlook a lot of things that they are paid to overlook. We are being bled dry & sacrificed for profit by our governments and the companies they profit from. We are cattle for bureaucratic vampires and we have to opt out wherever we can.
I've done my best to get out of it. Doctor's appointments with 4 different specialties used to be my social life.
Once I lost "half my size" the fitness trainer I was working with suggested I see all my doctors and get some of the 20+ meds cut back. He reasonably thought that the dose for a person near 150 pounds should not be the same a when I was close to 300.
Well, no - all the doctors wanted me to stay at the same dose. none of the meds could be reduced at all. I was feeling so much better then and decided to quit all of them and go back if I needed to. That took about a year with my doctors unhappily weaning me off of everything.
Now after 5 years I take NOT ONE of the medications and still feel fine. I stopped seeing the doctors after this point and I feel fine about that too.
Congratulations! Probably a life saving move on all accounts. ❤️💪
Very true. I would not be here today if I was still obese and so ill all the time.
I think I need some of your inspiration to get fitter!
I congratulate you in my head every time I come across you in comments @fitinfun!
@doitvoluntarily, thanks for reporting on this stuff. I'm a homeopath and almost ALL of my day's work is helping people clean up after medications and vaccine injury. Now and again I'm lucky enough to see people before they have drug side effects and are washed up by the medical profession. I cannot believe that they can get away with injuring someone, get more money from them to find out in what way they are injured, then tell them 'there's nothing more we can do for you. You'll have to live with it.' That's the point at which I usually see people. They have no more alternatives, so they head for 'alternative' medicine. Meanwhile, what homeopathy [and other natural forms of medicine] can do is suppressed and we are routinely ridiculed as quacks. Hey ho. The truth will out! People are awakening, slowly. These posts contribute to that awakening.
Yup - I'm dealing with all those same people in fb groups, coaching, and weight loss work.
When I finally got healthy a few years ago, one of the steps I took was to do a detox protocol without knowing what I was in for. I had 10 days of absolute misery and I thought I was going to die. I was a lab rat for most of my life and had every experimental thing you can think of done to me. I drank the poison often so a machine could read me. When all that stuff came out - it was a horrific time.
Right now I have moms in fb groups talking about the terrible times their kids have had with tamilflu, especially teen boys. They go from sick with the flu to insane, frightened, crying and suicidal in about 48 hours. Once the family realizes this is happening and stop the meds - it's days before the kid seems normal again. I wonder what residue is left behind from this. And tamilfu is banned in many other countries. Go figure.
Horrific 😢😢😢
They're there for Pfizer.
lol - on the taxpayer dime...
Any marketing where science is needed is a problem.
Hey dear @jamesc
jamesc
The 2 go completely against each other. Drug companies should never have been allowed to advertise in the first place. And doctors should have had training on the use of each prescription before being allowed to prescribe it. Many doctors do not even read the inserts of the pills they tell their patients to use.
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OMG ITS ABOUT TIME !! What the hell took them so long !?!? i sure hope they are one of many currently being sued for all the lives they have ruined !!I cant believe they continue making it and adding to the opioid crises even when faced with legal action !! I hope they all get shut down for good billions of dollars will not bring loved ones back but they need to pay for what they have done and be stopped once and for all !! uppped and resteemed @doitvoluntarily ! ✌👍😊
This news at least a shuffle in the right direction. But there's a LONG way to go obviously. When legal drug dealers are pushing pills and the Hippocratic oath of "do no harm" is laughably disregarded by physicians, we see the bigger picture of our sick society. Basta! We have to remember its people that matter not profits.
This is the reason that corporations cannot be allowed to be accorded rights as if they were people. Corporations are not people, and cannot have compassion. Corporations are legally treated as if they were people, and therefore act as if they were psychopaths because they have no empathy.
yep exactly. it allows psychopathic human tendencies to hide behind a screen... corporations are definitely not humans and shouldn't have human rights!!
Drugs generally sell themselves, I don't understand the excessive marketing, when a drug is potent and efficacious with little side effect, you generally see an increase in its usage organically. The idea of continuous excessive marketing makes you thing there is defo something fishy about it.
@doitvoluntarily I am extremely happy about this. In my younger ignorant years I worked in the Medical Industry. I saw the way drugs were pushed onto patients, so that Dr.s could reap the benefits. It goes so much worse than just the meds that are pushed. It is unnecessary procedures and processes as well. I would have Dr.'s force me to send patients to go get an X-Ray so they could take a lunch break. I would tell them I was holding their X-Ray's in my hands that were just done. The response would be I do not care send them again insurance will cover it. It was completely bizarre.
I’m sorry, but fuck big pharma. Turning people’s pain into a money extraction and marketing scheme is sickening. Generations have been affected now just from OxyContin.
The drug being an addiction to many and has been the case of death to some, the company surely should change their selling tactics. Most drug company around the world always lie about the benefit of their drugs and hide most of the effect cos they want to make profit, not minding health comes first. Thanks for sharing this information for public enlightenment
They accomplished their goal with the Oxy now how about the hundreds of other drugs that are addictive?
I hope they really do it and it is not a strategy until the noise that the complaints have caused and then resume their usual commercialization
Thank you very much dear friend @doitvoluntarily for sharing this news
I wish you a prosperous week
The issue is with people not taking personal responsibility for their own actions. People will do anything for a pay check and doctors themselves have to stop thinking about their commission and stop pushing these harmful substances out to people. The cats out of the bag about diet and nutrition which is the most important factor to health, yet these plasters kept being given to folk!
A very interesting article about health and medicine. Thank you very much for the information @doitvoluntarily
I am so mad about this and other crap that Big Pharma does. For sure if I got caught selling a little pot, even in a recreationally legal state, I still go to jail potentially. In other states, I go to jail for years. It is fair that I go to jail if I knowingly break laws and/or put other people at risk of harm.
The Opioid epidemic is just one more example of what should be criminal behaviour treated as if it is just the cost of doing business. The lives ruined and lost to Big Pharma's willful disregard for human suffering is far worse than drug cartels and the terrorist that supposedly profit from illegal drugs.
The advertising of medicines is a very dangerous trend. In Russia in the season of colds often there is such hidden propaganda of certain drugs. Often we are afraid of new viruses, encouraging you to take action, to buy medicines. Pharmacies often cooperate with manufacturers of medicines. They offer expensive pills. Talking about cheap alternatives.
Maybe they'll stop lobbying to keep marijuana illegal too...
Though this is a step in the right direction it will not help the ongoing opioid addiction... time to stop big pharma and stop using these addictive substances, unless it is the last resort when all other things fail. There are so much better and healthier pain management strategies out there.... but they don't bring in money :(
A friend of mine was in Special forces, His sole purpose in the Army was to guard the farmers growing Poppy Flowers and manufacturing heroin. Then they would run protection on transport too. He did this for 1 year. He came back to this post after leave and was there another 9 months. He was killed in action on his 14th deployment. THERE is to much power and money. Esp when those drugs can go into prescriptions pills to feed the American people. Curing or Containing right? Great post. Keep us Informed.
This is actually a good thing because Oxycontin is super addictive! I have read about many people who were only supposed to take it short term for a mild injury, but end up taking it long after they are healed. It's so sad for the families who have to watch their loved ones go through this :(
I bow down to those responsible for exposing the pharmaceutical companies responsible.
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So, I suppose they have some re-routing to accomplish the same marketing goal. What is really happening here?
This is good news, but the damage is done. Oxys hit big when I was in high school, and I only avoided them out of luck. I've seen many friends struggle with opioid addition, and it really pisses me off to know was all part of a marking campaign. Here in East Kentucky we have one of the highest rates of addiction in the country, and the crooked doctors don't need Purdue telling them how to move their pills.
Makes me sick that big pharma markets and pushes their products sometimes harder than fast food and potato chip companies.
These drugs should be used out of necessity, not casually pushed onto patients like Tylenol. Painkillers have to be the worst...take that back, ARE the worst of the entire prescription drug world. This is the stuff the government should be regulating and making illegal...but here they are spending millions on the fight against a green plant. All the while, kids are killing themselves and others over painkillers. And big pharma laughs all the way to the bank.
Allow people to grow a plant in their backyard? Oh hell no. Push expensive drugs on the general public in the name of profits...? Oh hell yes.
Great job. Good to know the people at the top have all of us little guys in mind.
Thanks for sharing.
This raises many, many questions for me. Essentially, this is good news. However, we need to consider “what next” for long time users. We also need to ensure end of life pain patients (such ass cancer patients with very little time left) still have access to medication.
I also fear this will lead to more addicts turning to illegal drugs such as heroine (potentially laced with fentanyl).
A clear plan on how to wean patients, and deal with the follow out is a must!
drug companies should never have been allowed to advertise to the public in the first place.
"just ask your doctor."
upvote
wow ! parfect post to steem friend . you are great .
Oxy is an evil thing when they produce more than there are prescriptions something must be up.
Thank you very much for the information.A very interesting article about health and medicine.
Always your posts are very impressive
so nice and Good
You gotta love how the American justice system works{{sarcasm}}. A citizen does this and will most likely go to prison, but when a corporation uses a practice that causes 10's of thousands of deaths, they are allowed to continue if they want or change their tactics voluntarily. This goes far beyond the Pharmaceutical Companies.
Just 2-3 years ago Chevy was caught knowingly selling their vehicles with faulty ignition switches, which caused at least 120 deaths and they simply got a slap on the hand. This is inexcusable.
This companies tactics has ruined the lives of millions and they are allowed to continue exploiting the consumer. The American Justice System is anything, but about justice.
I applaud a step in the right direction, but quite honestly I do not believe law-suits and legislation are the way to approach the problem of over-medication that is being pushed on us so aggressively. The way to go is by educating the masses that medical and pharmaceutical industries are there for their own benefit and not for that of the people. Each individual is solely responsible for their health and the sooner they realize that the better (for them, not the pharma industry).
making drug is a complicated business, it's hard for patients, and even doctors to fully understand these drugs due to the information barrier, that's why big pharma can continue this practice indefinitely.
Health is very important to every people. Thank you so much to share this news.
Thanks to this precious information, there are so many people in the world who are still laymen of medicine. The treatment people only think about how to get rid of it.
Really very useful post.
Good luck @doitvoluntarily
If it’s not price gouged, then sell it to hospice.
Sometimes what passes for medicine in our world is alarming. I'm not a huge fan of govt intervention, but this stuff has gotten out of hand and something definitely needs to be done. Thanks for sharing this, a step in the right direction at least! I just wanted to stop by, say thanks for your recent support of my blog and leave an upvote. thanks! @markrmorrisjr
Balance is very vital. Although some of these drugs have negative effects(like addictive effects) they have useful medical benefits.
In my own opinion; pharmaceutical companies should allow flow of marketing of their products (not influence/ coerce sales unnecessarily )
Also I will like to add that the drug enforcement agencies should ensure that accurate components of the drugs (with their precise quantity)should be made known for both doctors and patients
More power to your elbow @doitvoluntarily
Oh this is really essntial for us... this drug helps to better life with husbend/wife. Is it 100% safe for us??* any side-affects???
I’ve rather stick to herbs which has less side effects compare to conventional pain killer medicines
That's very awesome! The other addictive drug makers should do the same. We need less kids on Adderall as well.
really a very useful writing, adding science, I like
@doitvoluntarily Great post, definitely pharmaceutical labs and medical or health visitors tend to hide the secondary effects of the drugs they promote in order to increase sells. We should pay more attention to the drugs that are prescribed to us and discuss any concerns with our doctor. Great info about the OxyContin.
I can't fathom why it has taken this long. People have known of the detrimental effects it has had for years and years now. Doctors and the health industry simply valued the dollar over the well being of people. Sad!
it just proves that people must take responsibility for their decisions and never put their lives blindly into the hands of others, be it doctors, lawyers, or the politicians. The truth is that despite all of the hype about how the government is making us safer, despite all the licensing and inspections, most problems are discovered by the general public and only then do the authorities go into alert mode. The false sense of security is actually detrimental to public safety!
Nothing like a little over the country heroin. Unreal what passes for "OK" in and "not ok" in our country. But it looks like thing have started heading in the right direction.
You've got a great blog my friend. Great informative topics one after another. You not an investigative journalist in the real world are you? Because I think you make for a real good one!
Keep up the great work! -Dan