OxyContin's Manufacturer Was Not Well-Received At Hearing

U.S. SENATE QUESTIONS PURDUE PHARMA

Some Say The Company's Aggressive Marketing Of OxyContin Has Contributed To
Problems With Its Abuse.

WASHINGTON - A marketing campaign that helped make OxyContin the
top-selling opium-based painkiller in the country is not selling well to
some members of Congress.

Purdue Pharma, which spent about $200 million last year marketing and
promoting a painkiller that has been widely abused in parts of Southwest
Virginia, was questioned about its practices Tuesday at a Senate committee
hearing.

(ftp://ftp.senate.gov/member/va/warner/general/warner.html)Sen. John
Warner, R-Va., who first asked the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee to look into OxyContin abuse, said he supports calls from other
legislators for a study by the General Accounting Office into Purdue
Pharma's marketing practices.

A spokesman for the office, which serves as the investigative arm of
Congress, said the study will likely begin soon.

Although some say the company's aggressive marketing of OxyContin has
contributed to problems with abuse, Warner stressed that he and other
committee members realize that any possible action by Congress must be
tempered with awareness of the drug's benefits to thousands of people who
suffer from chronic pain.

"We're not going to leap to legislation," Warner said. The medical
community, law enforcement, patient advocates and others need to be
consulted before a decision can be made on what Congress might do to curb
abuse of OxyContin, he said.

At Warner's invitation, the committee heard from one of Purdue Pharma's
harshest critics - Dr. Art Van Zee, a Lee County physician who says the
over selling of OxyContin has contributed to an Appalachian epidemic that
includes rampant addiction, dozens of fatal overdoses and rising crime rates.

Van Zee told the committee that the company uses marketing data to pinpoint
doctors who prescribe OxyContin the most, then dispatches its sales
representatives to those physicians with the incentive of making twice
their $50,000 annual salary in bonuses for high sales.

Purdue Pharma has also given away free samples of OxyContin as a
promotional effort, Van Zee said, and often pushes its product by
underwriting pain management seminars where doctors receive perks both to
attend and to speak.

One Roanoke doctor paid $500 by Purdue Pharma to speak at such a gathering
was Cecil Knox, who was indicted earlier this month in federal court on
charges of overprescribing OxyContin and other narcotics to the point of
causing death or serious injury to 10 of his patients.

Purdue Pharma has said it did not use Knox extensively as a speaker.

Van Zee, who is also leading a petition to have the Food and Drug
Administration take OxyContin off the market, told the committee that
current regulations allow the pharmaceutical industry to influence
prescribing practices. "For me, that's a recipe for commercial success and
public health problems," he said.

Robin Hogen, executive director of public affairs for Purdue Pharma, said
there is no truth to Van Zee's allegation that the company targets doctors
who are the most liberal prescribers of OxyContin, which last year
accounted for sales of more than $1 billion.

"We actually spend more time with physicians who write fewer prescriptions,
because that's where the potential is," he said.

Paul Goldenheim, vice president for research at the Connecticut-based
company, said the $200 million spent last year on marketing and promoting
OxyContin represents about 20 percent of total sales, which is the industry
norm. That figure also includes educational programs that warn of potential
abuse of OxyContin, which the company has intensified since first learning
of problems in some parts of the country in 2000, Goldenheim said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has said that excessive promotion of
OxyContin has contributed to abuse, which occurs when addicts compromise
the drug's time-release feature by crushing the pills and then swallowing,
snorting or injecting the powder for an intense high similar to heroin's.

An FDA official did not respond directly when asked Tuesday by Sen. Susan
Collins, R-Maine, if he agreed with that assessment.

All John Jenkins, director of the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and
Research, would say was that Purdue Pharma is "generally in compliance with
FDA regulations." The company does not advertise OxyContin directly to
potential patients, he said, although there is no regulation to prevent that.

The primary goal of Purdue Pharma's marketing is effective pain management,
Goldenheim said.

"While some may characterize these activities as 'aggressive marketing,' we
believe that our efforts to alert the medical community to the vast
under-treatment of pain in the United States ... [were] in fact in the
interest of public health," he said.

Some lawsuits have claimed that Purdue Pharma overpromoted OxyContin while
playing down its risks, but that allegation has yet to be proven in court.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Kentucky threw out part of a lawsuit
that attempted to link the drug's abuse to the company's marketing efforts.

The lawsuits, including one pending in Western Virginia, also claim that
patients became addicted to OxyContin after first taking the drug as
prescribed by a doctor. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said the committee
needs to examine that aspect of the problem as well.

"We have a lot of people who are caught up in this OxyContin abuse who
started off as legitimate users and then fell into the abyss," Clinton said.