Van Zee didn’t yet grasp what was truly driving the furious rate of overprescription. Sales-rep bonuses were growing exponentially, from $1 million in 1996, the year OxyContin hit the market, to $40 million in 2001. New patients were given OxyContin “starter coupons” for free prescriptions—redeemable for a thirty-day supply—and Purdue conducted more than forty national pain management and speaker-training conferences, luring doctors to resorts from Boca Raton, Florida, to Scottsdale, Arizona. The trips were free, including beach hats with the royal-blue OxyContin logo. More than five thousand
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