Sen Claire McCaskill (D, Missouri) has launched a Senate investigation into whether 5 drug companies marketed their opioid painkillers in a manner that may have contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic.
In letters to the companies, which include Mylan, Depomed, INSYS Therapeutics, Purdue Pharma, and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen division, McCaskill demanded internal documents relating to the firms’ marketing tactics, studies the companies conducted that might have alerted them to the risk of addiction and lethal overdose, behind-the-scenes efforts to block increased regulation, and sales quotas that may have led drug representatives to use kickbacks to encourage physicians to prescribe the drugs.
