The salesmen would arrive every few months to provide docs an elaborate lunch of steak, salad, and dessert. They had slides and graphics that presented the startling idea that the company’s new drug, OxyContin, was virtually nonaddictive. Less than 1 percent of patients ever grew addicted, they said in their presentations. This claim startled Prior because OxyContin contained large doses of the opiate called oxycodone. Prior had attended medical school in the early 1980s, where he had learned opiates were generally to be avoided. He’d remembered a study that concluded that daily usage of 30 mg
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