AIN’T ENOUGH –
Feb. 2, 2024 – “When you visit a physician, you do not expect that the details of your most intimate and personal struggles with illness and pain will be converted into pharmaceutical product marketing materials to be used to increase opioid sales,” said Attorney General Platkin.
“I can’t think of a better example of an ‘unconscionable’ commercial practice than exploiting the suffering of patients in order to grow profits.”
Officials said that in addition to harvesting data from recordings of patient-provider conversations and engineering the strategy of using patients’ electronic health records to remind providers to prescribe Oxycontin, the complaint also alleges that Publicis created additional marketing strategies to increase opioid sales and fuel the crisis.
Specifically, officials say, Publicis advised and assisted Purdue Pharma in using unbranded marketing that relied on front groups and key opinion leaders to disseminate messaging that prescription opioids were safe and less addictive.
