[6] In response, Purdue Pharma filed a motion on January 30 to stay Judge Sanders' order that "could expose details about one of America's richest families and their connection to the nation's opioid crisis.
[9][10] A July 1996 study co-authored by Paul D. Goldenheim MD - who later became Purdue's chief medical officer - published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology reported that the controlled-release (CR) formulation - by mouth - had a variable duration of action ranging from 10 to 12 hours.
In 1996, Purdue Pharma "began a massive marketing campaign", based on a "unique claim" for OxyContin, with FDA permission, that, "as a long-acting opioid, it might be less likely to cause abuse and addiction than shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet.
[16]: 87 [9] A 2004 New York Times review of Meier's 2003 book, Pain Killer, described how "For years, doctors who prescribed OxyContin were told that the risk of addiction to the painkiller was less than 1 percent.
Only after the drug had devastated thousands of lives was it revealed that this figure, touted as scientific fact, was based on a small study that had no relevance for the general public.
[17][18] In a 2015 article in the Annual Review of Public Health, researchers wrote that, "Between 1996 and 2002, Purdue Pharma funded more than 20,000 pain-related educational programs through direct sponsorship or financial grants and launched a multifaceted campaign to encourage long-term use of [opioid painkillers] for chronic non-cancer pain.
"[19][21] In response to the series, Senator Edward J. Markey, (D-MASS) asked the DOJ, the FDA, and the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation into Purdue Pharma.
[2] Governor Andrew Cuomo said, "The opioid epidemic was manufactured by unscrupulous distributors who developed a $400 billion industry pumping human misery into our communities.
[2] A 2004 New York Times review of Meier's 2003 book, Pain Killer, described how "For years, doctors who prescribed OxyContin were told that the risk of addiction to the painkiller was less than 1 percent.
Only after the drug had devastated thousands of lives was it revealed that this figure, touted as scientific fact, was based on a small study that had no relevance for the general public.
[25] Just before the trial, John Brownlee, the federal attorney in Roanoke in rural Virginia met privately with Barry Meier, author of Pain Killer: A Wonder Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death, to tell him that his August 2001 interview with the three top Purdue executives Friedman, Udell, and Goldenheim, had helped "inform" the DOJ's investigation.
Meier and a New York Times photographer met the three executives on May 10, 2007, as they had left the federal courthouse in Roanoke, heading to their corporate jet to go back to Connecticut, just before Brownlee's public announcement of their guilty pleas of "misbranding" OxyContin.
[34] Attorney Paul Hanley, who represents Suffolk County in the lawsuit, said in a radio interview that, the Sackler family "marketed the drug while knowing it was promoting faulty information about it."