Australia fines Sackler-owned opioid maker over advertising

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By KRISTEN GELINEAU

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia’s drug regulator has fined a pharmaceutical company owned by the billionaire Sackler family over what it dubbed misleading advertising for one of its opioid painkillers, as the country grapples with surging rates of opioid prescriptions and related deaths.

Mundipharma Australia, the international affiliate of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, was ordered to pay penalties of 302,400 Australian dollars ($209,000) by the Therapeutic Goods Administration over its promotion of the opioid Targin, the drug regulator said in a statement.

The fine against Mundipharma comes as Purdue faces a barrage of lawsuits in the United States accusing it of deceptive marketing tactics that downplayed the addictive nature of its opioids.

In a story documenting Australia’s ballooning opioid crisis earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Mundipharma was facing accusations from a local doctor and a doctors’ group that its Targin advertising was misleading. At the time, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told the AP he had asked the TGA to investigate those claims.



FILE - In this July 17, 2019, file photo, a pack of Targin opioid pills made by Mundipharma is photographed in Sydney, Australia. Australia’s drug regulator has fined a pharmaceutical company owned by the billionaire Sackler family over what it dubbed misleading advertising for one of its opioid painkillers, as the country grapples with surging rates of opioid prescriptions and related deaths. Mundipharma Australia, the international affiliate of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, was ordered to pay penalties of 302,400 Australian dollars ($209,000) by the Therapeutic Goods Administration over its promotion of the opioid Targin, the drug regulator said in a statement. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

Read more: https://apnews.com/5ed234ffd469591765f06b99f167e40f

[Aussie105]

1. Too little, too late.

The fines themselves do nothing for those people addicted to oxycontin, or relatives of those who died from it.

The pharma companies in Australia, and imagine in America, have a very effective pipeline to their front line drug pushers, the doctors, via in-house magazines that the general public never get to see.
(Oxy breaks down in the body to morphine, how is that not going to be addictive, or lethal in habitual use? Doctors, get a grip!)

A regulator that sees a problem only after the fact, isn't doing a very good job.

But the fine? A token effort to fix a problem, trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted.

Australia needs a group action from private citizens. I'd be in it, they owe me $10 K for a funeral for my son, plus more for pain and suffering.

[ck4829]

2. K&R