Source: Washington Post
Newly unsealed documents in a landmark in Cleveland this week show the pressure within drug companies to sell opioids in the face of numerous red flags during the height of the epidemic.
The release of the exhibits — sworn depositions of executives, internal corporate emails and experts’ reports — also reveals the ignored concerns of some employees about the huge volume of pain pills streaming across the nation.
In one exhibit, emails show that a Purdue Pharma executive received an order from a distributor for 115,200 oxycodone pills, which was nearly twice as large as that distributor’s average order over the previous three months. The order came in at 4:15 p.m., according to the emails sent in October 2009.
The release of the exhibits — sworn depositions of executives, internal corporate emails and experts’ reports — also reveals the ignored concerns of some employees about the huge volume of pain pills streaming across the nation.
In one exhibit, emails show that a Purdue Pharma executive received an order from a distributor for 115,200 oxycodone pills, which was nearly twice as large as that distributor’s average order over the previous three months. The order came in at 4:15 p.m., according to the emails sent in October 2009.
It was approved one minute later.
In another of the exhibits, Nathan J. Hartle, vice president of regulatory affairs and compliance for McKesson, the nation’s largest drug distributor, was asked during a July 2018 deposition about the billions of oxycodone pills that the company had shipped nationwide.
Did McKesson accept partial responsibility for the societal costs? “I think we’re responsible for something,” Hartle said. “I don’t know what — how you define all societal costs and — I still believe it depends on different circumstances.”
A third exhibit shows that a customer service rep for Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals raised questions internally in May 2008 about orders from a new customer, Sunrise Wholesale of Florida.
“Were you expecting Sunrise to place such a large order??” the customer service employee asked in an email to Victor Borelli, a national account manager with Mallinckrodt. “And do they really want 2520 bottles of OXYCODONE HCL 30MG TABS USP, 100 count each ??”
This email was forwarded to one of Mallinckrodt’s top compliance officers with the note: “FYI — the customer service reps all state that Victor will tell them anything they want to hear just so he can get the sale…”
Those glimpses inside the companies now accused of fueling the nation’s opioid epidemic appear in exhibits that were unsealed by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in a massive lawsuit unfolding in a Cleveland courthouse against some of the biggest names in the drug industry. In addition to McKesson, Purdue and Mallinckrodt, they include Cardinal Health, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart.
A Drug Enforcement Administration database made public July 15 as part of the lawsuit revealed that the companies inundated the nation with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from 2006 through 2012. Nearly 2,000 cities, counties and towns are alleging that the companies knowingly flooded their communities with highly addictive painkillers, fueling an epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 people since 1996.