COLUMBIA, SC (WBTW) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin and other opioid drugs. The suit was filed in the Richland County Court of Common Pleas and alleges that Purdue unfairly and deceptively marketed the drugs, which helped create and fuel South Carolina’s opioid epidemic.
The lawsuit says Purdue violated South Carolina’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, failed to comply with the terms of a 2007 consent judgment with the state for similar conduct, and created a public nuisance.
The lawsuit specifically mentions that, from 2007 onward, Purdue significantly downplayed how addictive its opioids are and overstated the benefits of opioids compared to other forms of pain management in order to increase its market share and profits. According to the complaint, since the 2007 consent judgment, Purdue “rather than reforming its opioid marketing to comply with the law … continued to mislead and obfuscate.”
The lawsuit alleges that Purdue continued to tell doctors the following:
- Patients receiving opioid prescriptions for pain generally would not become addicted, and that doctors could use screening tools to exclude patients who might;
- Patients who did appear addicted were not; they were instead “pseudoaddicted” and needed more opioids;
- Opioids relieved pain when used long-term, without any studies to support this claim and without disclosing the other risks from long-term use of opioids;
- Opioids could be taken in higher and higher doses without disclosing the ensuing risk to the patient (which included addiction, constipation, and greater sensitivity to pain);
- OxyContin provided 12 hours of relief when Purdue knew that, for many patients, it did not.
“Given my duty to the residents of South Carolina, my office is obligated to take action as South Carolinians continue to fall victim to Purdue’s deceptive marketing of its highly addictive opioid products without care for the lives and families it is jeopardizing,” said South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in a press release. “South Carolina is not immune to the headlines we see daily about the toll of opioids on individual patients, families, and communities. It has created a public health epidemic and imposed a significant burden on law enforcement and social services in our state.”
In 2016, South Carolina was 9th in the nation in opioid prescribing rates and since 2011, more than 3,000 South Carolinians have died from prescription opioid overdoses.
The attorney general says the goal of the lawsuit is to hold Purdue accountable “for creating this crisis and seeks remedies to stop its misleading, deceptive, and dangerous marketing tactics. While there is a time and place for patients to receive opioids, Purdue prevented doctors and patients from receiving complete and accurate information about opioids in order to make informed choices about their treatment options.”Information above is from a press release submitted by the SC Attorney General’s Office.