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More than 1M OxyContin pills ended up in the hands of criminals and addicts. What the drugmaker knew
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-oxycontin-part2/
More than 1 million OxyContin pills ended up in the hands of criminals and addicts. What the drugmaker knew
By HARRIET RYAN, LISA GIRION AND SCOTT GLOVER
July 10, 2016
In the waning days of summer in 2008, a convicted felon and his business partner leased office space on a seedy block near MacArthur Park. They set up a waiting room, hired an elderly physician and gave the place a name that sounded like an ordinary clinic: Lake Medical.
During a single week in September 2008, Eleanor Santiago of Lake Medical, issued orders for 1,500 pills, more than entire pharmacies sold in a month. (Court exhibit)
The doctor began prescribing the opioid painkiller OxyContin – in extraordinary quantities. In a single week in September, she issued orders for 1,500 pills, more than entire pharmacies sold in a month. In October, it was 11,000 pills. By December, she had prescribed more than 73,000, with a street value of nearly $6 million.
At its headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, tracked the surge in prescriptions. A sales manager went to check out the clinic and the company launched an investigation. It eventually concluded that Lake Medical was working with a corrupt pharmacy in Huntington Park to obtain large quantities of OxyContin.
“Shouldn’t the DEA be contacted about this?” the sales manager, Michele Ringler, told company officials in a 2009 email. Later that evening, she added, “I feel very certain this is an organized drug ring...”
Purdue did not shut off the supply of highly addictive OxyContin and did not tell authorities what it knew about Lake Medical until several years later when the clinic was out of business and its leaders indicted.
By that time, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the hands of Armenian mobsters, the Crips gang and other criminals.
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A private, family-owned corporation, Purdue has earned more than $31 billion from OxyContin, the nation’s bestselling painkiller. A year before Lake Medical opened, Purdue and three of its executives pleaded guilty to federal charges of misbranding OxyContin in what the company acknowledged was an attempt to mislead doctors about the risk of addiction. It was ordered to pay $635 million in fines and fees.
After the settlement, Purdue touted a high-powered internal security team it had set up to guard against the illicit use of its drug. Drugmakers like Purdue are required by law to establish and maintain “effective controls” against the diversion of drugs from legitimate medical purposes.
That anti-diversion effort at Purdue was run by associate general counsel Robin Abrams, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New York who had prosecuted healthcare fraud and prescription drug cases. Jack Crowley, who held the title of executive director of Controlled Substances Act compliance and had spent decades at the DEA, was also on the team.
Purdue had access to a stream of data showing how individual doctors across the nation were prescribing OxyContin. The information came from IMS, a company that buys prescription data from pharmacies and resells it to drugmakers for marketing purposes.
That information was vital to Purdue’s sales department. Representatives working on commission used it to identify doctors writing a small number of OxyContin prescriptions who might be persuaded to write more.
<>
More than 1 million OxyContin pills ended up in the hands of criminals and addicts. What the drugmaker knew
By HARRIET RYAN, LISA GIRION AND SCOTT GLOVER
July 10, 2016
In the waning days of summer in 2008, a convicted felon and his business partner leased office space on a seedy block near MacArthur Park. They set up a waiting room, hired an elderly physician and gave the place a name that sounded like an ordinary clinic: Lake Medical.
During a single week in September 2008, Eleanor Santiago of Lake Medical, issued orders for 1,500 pills, more than entire pharmacies sold in a month. (Court exhibit)
The doctor began prescribing the opioid painkiller OxyContin – in extraordinary quantities. In a single week in September, she issued orders for 1,500 pills, more than entire pharmacies sold in a month. In October, it was 11,000 pills. By December, she had prescribed more than 73,000, with a street value of nearly $6 million.
At its headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, tracked the surge in prescriptions. A sales manager went to check out the clinic and the company launched an investigation. It eventually concluded that Lake Medical was working with a corrupt pharmacy in Huntington Park to obtain large quantities of OxyContin.
“Shouldn’t the DEA be contacted about this?” the sales manager, Michele Ringler, told company officials in a 2009 email. Later that evening, she added, “I feel very certain this is an organized drug ring...”
Purdue did not shut off the supply of highly addictive OxyContin and did not tell authorities what it knew about Lake Medical until several years later when the clinic was out of business and its leaders indicted.
By that time, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the hands of Armenian mobsters, the Crips gang and other criminals.
<>
A private, family-owned corporation, Purdue has earned more than $31 billion from OxyContin, the nation’s bestselling painkiller. A year before Lake Medical opened, Purdue and three of its executives pleaded guilty to federal charges of misbranding OxyContin in what the company acknowledged was an attempt to mislead doctors about the risk of addiction. It was ordered to pay $635 million in fines and fees.
After the settlement, Purdue touted a high-powered internal security team it had set up to guard against the illicit use of its drug. Drugmakers like Purdue are required by law to establish and maintain “effective controls” against the diversion of drugs from legitimate medical purposes.
That anti-diversion effort at Purdue was run by associate general counsel Robin Abrams, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New York who had prosecuted healthcare fraud and prescription drug cases. Jack Crowley, who held the title of executive director of Controlled Substances Act compliance and had spent decades at the DEA, was also on the team.
Purdue had access to a stream of data showing how individual doctors across the nation were prescribing OxyContin. The information came from IMS, a company that buys prescription data from pharmacies and resells it to drugmakers for marketing purposes.
That information was vital to Purdue’s sales department. Representatives working on commission used it to identify doctors writing a small number of OxyContin prescriptions who might be persuaded to write more.
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