Post by Logan on Jun 2, 2016 3:20:13 GMT -6
In Virginia, federal prosecution and fines didn't stop pain-pill prescribing
The message from the little federal courthouse in Abingdon, Va., was as dramatic as the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains: The leaders of Purdue Pharma, who had ushered in the OxyContin era of freedom from pain, had misbranded their drug when they claimed it was not addictive.
On that day in 2007, three company executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, and the firm committed to pay $635 million for its false marketing of the time-release oxycodone painkiller. John Brownlee, who was then the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said their “misrepresentations and crimes sparked one of our nation's greatest prescription drug failures." The settlement was national news.
Seven years later, though, physician Dwight L. Bailey’s signature on an order suspending his medical license showed that even in Lebanon, Va., just 20 miles from Abingdon, the message had not been heeded.
One of his patients had, over seven years, been prescribed 14,640 oxycodone pills and other drugs for back and leg pain and for anxiety and panic attacks, according to a Virginia Board of Medicine investigative report. Dr. Bailey had heard, from an anonymous caller, that the man in his 40s was snorting his pain medications and getting “so messed up that he passes out and burns holes in the couch.” Four months after that warning — and one week after Dr. Bailey’s practice prescribed him 120 doses of Roxicodone, 60 doses of Percocet, 120 doses of Xanax, and 60 doses of Soma, a muscle relaxant — the patient died of an overdose.
Read more: www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2016/06/02/In-Virginia-federal-prosecution-and-fines-didn-t-stop-pain-pill-prescribing/stories/201606020046
The message from the little federal courthouse in Abingdon, Va., was as dramatic as the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains: The leaders of Purdue Pharma, who had ushered in the OxyContin era of freedom from pain, had misbranded their drug when they claimed it was not addictive.
On that day in 2007, three company executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, and the firm committed to pay $635 million for its false marketing of the time-release oxycodone painkiller. John Brownlee, who was then the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said their “misrepresentations and crimes sparked one of our nation's greatest prescription drug failures." The settlement was national news.
Seven years later, though, physician Dwight L. Bailey’s signature on an order suspending his medical license showed that even in Lebanon, Va., just 20 miles from Abingdon, the message had not been heeded.
One of his patients had, over seven years, been prescribed 14,640 oxycodone pills and other drugs for back and leg pain and for anxiety and panic attacks, according to a Virginia Board of Medicine investigative report. Dr. Bailey had heard, from an anonymous caller, that the man in his 40s was snorting his pain medications and getting “so messed up that he passes out and burns holes in the couch.” Four months after that warning — and one week after Dr. Bailey’s practice prescribed him 120 doses of Roxicodone, 60 doses of Percocet, 120 doses of Xanax, and 60 doses of Soma, a muscle relaxant — the patient died of an overdose.
Read more: www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2016/06/02/In-Virginia-federal-prosecution-and-fines-didn-t-stop-pain-pill-prescribing/stories/201606020046