Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

by Beth Macy

To resolve the federal criminal and civil misbranding charges, Purdue would pay $600 million in fines and admit that for six years it had fraudulently marketed OxyContin as being less prone to abuse and having fewer narcotic side effects than instant-release versions of the drug—a felony misbranding charge. Top executives Paul Goldenheim, Michael Friedman, and Udell would pony up $34.5 million (or, rather, the firm would, on their behalf) and plead guilty to misdemeanor versions of the crime. The fines against Purdue and its executives accounted for about 90 percent of the company’s profits from the time the drug went on the market, in 1996, until 2001, when Purdue dropped the insert language about the timed-lapse mechanism’s ability to “reduce the abuse liability of a drug,” Brownlee explained. It was the eleventh-largest fine paid by a pharmaceutical firm in the Justice Department’s history.