Big Pharma has a big problem, and the proof is about to move from morgues into courtrooms.
According to Consumer Reports, an average of 49 people a day, or about 17,000 a year, are dying from prescription drug overdoses from a single type of drug.
For every death, more than 30 others find themselves in an emergency room.
Though the problems started almost as soon as these pills came to the market, the number of prescriptions written by doctors for opioids — such as OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicoden — has increased by 300% in the last decade.
Overdoses of opioids are up 400% since 1999. Plus this doesn’t count the overdoses of acetaminophen, which is commonly mixed with the more potent opioid drugs, as addicts eat, snort, or even dissolve and inject more pills.
Consumer Reports is now urging the FDA to tighten regulations for these medications, and reconsider the approval of a new prescription narcotic named Zohydro.
But if there is anything to learn from the past, it is that these pills, as useful as they may be when properly managed, are going to continue to be handed out, illegally sold and abused, and kill more people.
Meanwhile, the manufacturer of many of these drugs has its past coming back to haunt it, and we have a chance to get ahead on the all but inevitable backlash that is building across the nation.
A new class of drugs is poised to fill the gap, and it is a very, very large gap of up to $120 billion globally.
Troubled Past, Uncertain Future
At the heart of the matter is Purdue Pharma LP, the maker of OxyContin and several other forms of opioid prescription drugs.
When OxyContin was released in 1996, the company sold it to doctors and the FDA as an alternative with lower abuse potential than immediate-release oxycodone because it was a “time-release” drug.
By early 2000, widespread reports of OxyContin abuse were circulating nationwide.
Efforts to tighten prescriptions were made by the company, but they were token efforts at best. It ends up that the drugs were just as addictive as heroin. Purdue knew it, yet it stuck to the story that was selling more and more pain pills.
In May 2007, the company pleaded guilty to misleading the public about how addictive OxyContin truly was and paid $600 million in one of the largest pharmaceutical settlements in history.
Furthermore, the president, head lawyer, and former chief medical officer pleaded guilty for their roles in misbranding charges and paid a total of $34.5 million in fines.
This settlement only addressed the criminal activities of the company and executives though. It did not shield the company from lawsuits brought by people who became addicted to its pills.
The amount of lawsuits so far has been staggering, and the toughest fights for Purdue are in the courts now.
In June 2013, an appellate court upheld a federal court decision that Purdue had lied to the U.S. Patent Office to secure the OxyContin patent.
A month later, 1,000 people sued the company in New York in separate cases.
Purdue has won dismissals in more than 400 personal-injury lawsuits related to the drug so far, according to Bloomberg, along with defeating more than 10 efforts to wage class-actions against it.
But a new angle is being used that mimics the Tobacco cases of the 90s that could finish off Purdue once and for all.
Lawsuits have been announced in Illinois, California, and Kentucky against Purdue and other opioid makers.
The Kentucky lawsuit alone seeks $1 billion in damages and features 12 claims against the company that include Medicaid fraud, false advertising, creating a public nuisance, and unjust enrichment.
Look at some of what was included in the lawsuit, as published by the LA Times, from Orange and Santa Clara counties in California to see the similarities to Big Tobacco:
- Despite “a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary,” the companies “opened the floodgates” for such drugs and “the result has been catastrophic.”
- The companies employed tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry to “conceal their deceptive marketing and conspiratorial behavior.”
- It was the drug makers’ “marketing — and not any medical breakthrough — that rationalized prescribing opioids for chronic pain.”
- Leading physicians — known within the companies as “key opinion leaders” — were recruited and paid to give speeches and write policy papers.
- Another marketing ploy was to create and co-opt patient advocacy organizations and medical specialty societies. The companies used these front groups to promote narcotic painkillers and to write treatment guidelines that expanded the market.
No wonder Purdue is warning of the potentially catastrophic blow it would be dealt. Its CFO has admitted that a ruling against the company would be “crippling.”
It appears that the Kentucky judge isn’t exactly sympathetic either, considering Purdue stated it is going into court with its “arms tied behind its back” after it lost initial procedural decisions.
Even if Purdue and the other pharmaceutical companies can stave off these lawsuits, the prescription pain pill market is never going to be the same.
Filling the Void
As the opioid problem gets worse and becomes widely known, the only logical reaction by doctors facing the facts of pharmaceutical company misdeeds and the severe risks of exposing patients to these drugs is to drastically reduce usage.
As these doctors follow the age old oath to “first, do no harm,” we have a chance to profit from a new class of drugs that is showing incredible early results.
20,000 studies have confirmed its efficacy, and 105 were peer-reviewed clinical studies. They found:
- It is more effective than any single painkiller or narcotic out there.
- It relieves pain for longer periods of time — without dangerous side effects.
- It significantly reduces the need for ANY opioid painkillers — to the point of zero.
Plus it can address chronic pain that current painkillers cannot begin to handle. A National Pain Institute survey of 1,300 fibromyalgia patients found that 62% of patients rated the drugs as “very effective” at treating their pain symptoms.
That’s compared to only a 10% rating approval of the three FDA-approved drugs for the disorder.
The market for it is already at $3 billion, and Forbes expects the U.S. market to grow up to 350% by 2016 and up to 485% by 2018.
Jimmy Mengel has been researching ways to play this life-saving, pain killing, and wildly growing development for the readers of The Crow’s Nest. He has everything you need to get in on this rapidly expanding breakthrough (subsribe for full details!).
