An agreement reached by the state of New York and Purdue Pharma will make the manufacturer’s internal program, which looks to prevent the promotion of painkillers to certain health care providers, permanent, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Thursday.
The company is a longtime manufacturer of OxyContin. The program specifically prevents its sales staff from promoting powerful painkillers to health care providers that might be connected to abuse and illegal diversion of opioids, Schneiderman said.
“Over the past two decades, New York has experienced a sharp increase in opioid addiction and that has coincided with the substantially increased sale of oxycodone,” Scheiderman said. “The public health crisis created by opioid overprescribing in New York remains pervasive and extremely dangerous. My office will work to ensure that prescription drugs are marketed and prescribed responsibly – and that consumers get the information they need about the risks of addiction to painkillers.”
Under the agreement, Purdue will also disclose financial relationships with doctors and health care professionals who appear on the company’s “unbranded” websites.
Prescriptions of oxycodone more than doubled in the country between the 1990s and 2011. OxyContin, the brand name for the drug, made up about 10 percent of the total oxycodone prescriptions in New York between 2008 and 2011.