was occasionally said, at Purdue, that OxyContin was so good it would “sell itself.” This was just a turn of phrase, rather than a formal marketing strategy, but the Sacklers took the notion seriously enough that Purdue initiated a costly program to issue free samples of OxyContin to pain patients. This was an old technique in the pharma business. When Bayer marketed heroin at the turn of the twentieth century, it offered free samples of the drug to potential customers. When Roche was seeking a foothold for Valium in Canada during the 1970s, the company gave away eighty-two million Valium
...more
