The Sackler family are owners of the drug company that caused a devastating drug crisis in the United States by making false claims about the safety of its highly addictive OxyContin. According to an AP story, Mundipharma, a Chinese company owned by the Sackler family is now using the same tactics in China. Mundipharma is telling doctors that its time-release opioids are less addictive than other kinds of opioids, “the same pitch that Purdue Pharma, the U.S. company owned by the family, admitted was false in court more than a decade ago.”
More from AP:
Mundipharma has pushed ever larger doses of the drug, even as it became clear that higher doses present higher risks, and represented the drug as safe for chronic pain, according the interviews and documents.
These tactics mirror those employed by Purdue Pharma in the U.S., where more than 400,000 people have died of opioid overdoses and millions more became addicted. An avalanche of litigation over the company’s marketing has driven Purdue Pharma into bankruptcy in the U.S.
In other words, if you were worried that the Sacklers might suffer as a result of their role US drug epidemic, this news should assuage your concerns. They’ll be fine.
Image: 51fifty, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link, Modified.