How did OxyContin move from a medication that doctors prescribed only to the most severely in pain to such a common treatment?
With the exception of a few doctors who are running pill mills, the doctors who are prescribing this drug wanted to help their patients. But now here comes a marketing campaign [from the drug’s makers] that says all the stuff you’ve heard about the dangers of narcotics is a myth; and not only are some of the myths you’ve heard not true, but this drug is safer than any narcotic you can use because it’s a new time-released drug, and the government has allowed us to make this claim that time-released drugs are less prone to abuse than so-called traditional immediate-release drugs. And doctors are also being told you’ve been ignoring this epidemic of untreated pain. And here’s the magical answer — a drug that is safer to use than every other competing drug on the market. It’s a very tempting combination. One reviewer of your book described Purdue as a “well-intentioned drug company.” Do you agree with that? The measure of any drug company is not how they react when things are going well,
