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Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, Justice Department officials announced Wednesday. The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said. The resolution will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court. Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son to an OxyContin overdose nearly 20 years ago, said he wants to see people...

Together with colleagues from Shanghai, Brussels, Canada and the USA, researchers from the University of Bonn have uncovered the binding mechanism of an important pain receptor. The results facilitate the development of new active substances. The opioids used today to treat severe pain can be addictive and sometimes have life-threatening side effects. The results of this new research are published in the renowned journal Science Advances. Opioids are among the most effective painkillers available today. They include, for instance, morphine or oxycodone, which has been prescribed very carelessly in the USA, with serious consequences: Hundreds of thousands of patients have...

The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss bank accounts to conceal the transfer of millions of dollars from the company to themselves, New York state’s attorney general contends in court papers filed Friday. New York — asking a judge to enforce subpoenas of companies, banks and advisers to Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family — said it has already documented $1 billion in transfers between those parties. Those transactions include millions shifted from a Purdue parent company to former board member Mortimer D.A. Sackler, prosecutors said in the papers. Prosecutors say Sackler then redirected substantial amounts...

Officials in San Diego County have issued an alert after three people have suffered documented fatal overdoses from a new form of the drug fentanyl know as carfentanil. It would only take 2 mg of the drug to cause a deadly overdose meanwhile it would only take .02 mg of carfentanil to have the same fatal results, CBS Sacramento reported. Langdon Fielding is an emergency veterinarian at Loomis Basin Equine. He said he uses fentanyl on horses for pain relief. "Basically it's super strong morphine-like a really strong drug to control pain," said Fielding. Carfentanil is similar to fentanyl but...

A member of the family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma told people at the prescription opioid painkiller’s launch party in the 1990s that it would be “followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” according to court documents filed Tuesday. “The launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white,” he said, according to the documents.

Gets paid to hook them, then paid again to UNhook them..?! Richard Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, the company behind the notorious painkiller OxyContin, was granted a patent earlier this year for a reformulation of a drug used to wean addicts off opioids. The invention is a novel form of buprenorphine, a mild opiate that controls drug cravings, which is often given as a substitute to people hooked on heroin or opioid painkillers such as OxyContin. (more at link)

Reliably red on the political map, Huntington is a West Virginia town with a 191-year-old university, a storied football team and more than 100 churches. It’s where Will Lockwood graduated from high school. It’s where he enrolled at Marshall University. It’s where he first tried OxyContin. By the time Lockwood entered Marshall as a freshman, Detroit dealers were trickling into Huntington selling OxyContin and pills with OxyContin’s active ingredient, oxycodone. Even though Lockwood could step out his front door and get the drug, Detroit street dealers weren’t the preferred supplier. Florida was. It may be 1,000 miles away, but to...

I understand that some Congressmen (by that I mean men and women, I’m unaware of any other “genders” currently serving but if there are, it includes them too) are offering jobs to Andrew McCabe in order to allow him to earn his federal pension. Would have been nice if they’d been similarly concerned about ordinary Americans who lost their jobs, and pensions, during the 8 year Obama occupation.I wish they’d just get back to tending to Global Warming, so the Rothschilds don’t end up running the world – and the weather.But what’s really not what’s bothering me today; number one...

The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said it will stop marketing opioid drugs to doctors, bowing to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the company for helping trigger the current drug abuse epidemic. Purdue's statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff this week and will no longer send sales representatives to doctors' offices to discuss opioid drugs. Its remaining sales staff of about 200 will focus on other medications. The company announced its surprise reversal on Saturday. OxyContin has long been the world's top-selling opioid painkiller, bringing in billions in sales for privately-held Purdue, which...

A 66-year-old Angie man is facing as long as 30 years in prison after being convicted by a Washington Parish jury of selling four oxycodone pain pills to a police informant. Henry James McMillan is be sentenced by Judge Donald Fendlason of the 22nd Judicial District Court on May 8, the North Shore district attorney's office said. McMillan was arrested after selling four OxyContin pills at his home to a confidential informant for the Washington Parish drug task force. The transaction, which took place on July 29, 2015, was recorded on videotape, prosecutors said. The informant also gave McMillan's co-defendant,...

OxyContin is a dying business in America. With the nation in the grip of an opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the U.S. medical establishment is turning away from painkillers. Top health officials are discouraging primary-care doctors from prescribing them for chronic pain, saying there is no proof that they work long-term and substantial evidence that they put patients at risk. Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost revenue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. So the company's owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the...

The infamously untrustworthy Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has furthered its reputation as one of America’s most beloved hypocrites with its latest motion. It was reported on Thursday that the FDA has just approved OxyContin prescriptions for children between the ages of 11 and 16 years-old. For those unfamiliar, OxyContin is an opiate-based pharmaceutical painkiller used to ease severe pain. Aside from being known for its powerful effects on users, it is also notorious for its widespread abuse. Its effects on the mind and body are strikingly similar to heroin, making it dangerously addictive. It typically contains anywhere between 40-160...

Despite all the advances of modern medicine, the main drugs used to fight pain today are essentially the same as those used in ancient times. Hippocrates wrote about the pain-soothing effects of willow bark and leaves as early as 400 B.C. Opium was cultivated long before that. Aspirin and morphine, based on the active ingredients in these traditional remedies, were isolated in the 1800's and helped form the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. But scientists are now trying to find new ways of fighting pain. The effort has been given new impetus by the recent withdrawal of Vioxx and...

Heroin abuse has been getting more attention lately. Last week, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin spent his entire 34-minute State of the State address talking about the state's "full-blown heroin crisis," and law enforcement officials in small cities across New England have noted an increase in heroin use. Demand for the drug might be coming from people who are hooked on prescription pills.Health officials and drug experts have started noticing that heroin use has been exploding as states crack down on "pill mills," which get people addicted to Oxycontin and other pain killers even when they don't have a medical need...

Some say it's not an opiate painkiller like Oxy, but Klonopin. And doctors are doling it out like candy, causing a surge of hellish withdrawals, overdoses and deaths.You could argue that the most dangerous “drug” in the world is the venom from a jellyfish known as the Sea Wasp, whose sting can kill a human being in four minutes—up to 100 humans at a time. Potassium chloride, which is used to trigger cardiac arrest and death in the 38 states of the U.S. that enforce the death penalty is also pretty deadly . But when it comes to prescription drugs...

Historically, opiate addicts have had a very poor track record for recovery. But evidence-based clinical best practices, known as Medication Assisted Treatment, have been identified by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that have nine times better effectiveness outcomes than traditional treatment. SAMHSA found certain types of psychotherapy combined with medications like methadone or Suboxone enhance the probability of avoiding relapse substantially... Medication Assisted Treatment is a very effective treatment for opiate addiction like painkillers or heroin... On MAT, you substitute a once daily dose of a medication like methadone or Suboxone (buprenorphine) for the opiates you usually...

Federal health regulators will require generic versions of the best-selling painkiller OxyContin to include recent formulation changes designed to make the pill harder to abuse. The Food and Drug Administration said late Tuesday it would not approve any generic versions of OxyContin based on the original formulation because it “poses an increased potential for certain types of abuse.” … OxyContin has long been one the nation’s top-selling prescription painkillers with sales of more than $2.8 billion last year, according to prescription tracker IMS Health. A time-release version of the narcotic oxycodone, the pill was hailed as a breakthrough treatment for...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Las Vegas high school teacher who recently won his job back in arbitration after he was fired several years ago has been suspended. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports 54-year-old John Mannion was sent home from Bonanza High School on Friday after officials learned he faces felony drug trafficking charges. He was arrested last July on suspicion of selling the prescription painkiller Oxycontin to an undercover detective.

After receiving a tip earlier in the day, Bayonne police arrested Friday a town resident and pharmacy technician who admitted to stealing more than 2,000 Oxycontin pills over a six-month period, officials said today. Mena Mekhael, 21, of Lord Avenue, was arrested as he was leaving the Jerry's Drug & Surgical Supply at 455 Broadway near West 21st Street, at 6:45 p.m. Friday, police said. He was hit with a slew of drug charges, including theft of a controlled dangerous substance (CDS), possession of CDS Oxycontin, possession of CDS Xanax, possession of CDS with intent to distribute, and possession of...

Three tribes lead the best practice initiative treating the epidemic of painkiller addiction in Native America, Oklahoma, the nation's leader in painkiller addiction. Treating all adults, Medicaid. Last month the Center for Disease Control called prescription painkiller addiction an epidemic in the country, identifying Oklahoma as leading the nation in both the addiction and related deaths. It is only fitting that the battle against such addiction in "Native America" be led by three tribal owned clinics, Absentee Shawnee Counseling Services, OKC; Keetoowah Cherokee Treatment Services, Tulsa; and Quapaw Counseling Services, Miami. Generally speaking, prescription painkillers are opiates. There are 14...