marketing skills to increase the use of Valium, thereby creating the first 100 million dollar drug. His marketing approach included: indulging doctors with expensive dinners; offering generous speaking fees; and fancy junkets. This approach has been so effective that the entire industry has adopted it.
Arthur was so ingenious, that he realized from completing research that the growth area in pharmaceuticals was pain medication. Consequently, in 1984, Purdue Pharma took a cancer pain medication, Morphine Sulfate, and added a time-release formula, which it marketed as MSContin. Over the next decade, this drug generated 475 million dollars. Arthur just needed to find a way to make it accessible to more people. This brings us to the development of OxyContin, which was …show more content…
Before this, the drug had only been used for severe pain sufferers, like cancer patients. The stratagem was in adding the time-release component, which accelerated FDA approval to sell OxyContin, in late 1995. This allowed the marketing of OxyContin as non-addictive, since the drug was released over a 12 hour time span, hence avoiding withdrawal symptoms and eradicating the euphoric rush that addicts seek. A promotional video for OxyContin in 1998, claimed an addiction rate below 1%. Since doctors no longer feared addiction, they began prescribing the drug, and sales skyrocketed. In 1996, sales from OxyContin were 45 million dollars; and by 2010, sales had escalated to 3.1 billion dollars. The video did not disclose to doctors that OxyContin was a few molecules away from being synthetic heroin, and shortly after being distributed, cunning addicts figured a way around the time release component, to get the heroin-like rush. Now addicts had a means of getting an opiate drug by legal means, which had very lethal consequences. One study that was performed in the state of Washington, found that
Arthur was so ingenious, that he realized from completing research that the growth area in pharmaceuticals was pain medication. Consequently, in 1984, Purdue Pharma took a cancer pain medication, Morphine Sulfate, and added a time-release formula, which it marketed as MSContin. Over the next decade, this drug generated 475 million dollars. Arthur just needed to find a way to make it accessible to more people. This brings us to the development of OxyContin, which was …show more content…
Before this, the drug had only been used for severe pain sufferers, like cancer patients. The stratagem was in adding the time-release component, which accelerated FDA approval to sell OxyContin, in late 1995. This allowed the marketing of OxyContin as non-addictive, since the drug was released over a 12 hour time span, hence avoiding withdrawal symptoms and eradicating the euphoric rush that addicts seek. A promotional video for OxyContin in 1998, claimed an addiction rate below 1%. Since doctors no longer feared addiction, they began prescribing the drug, and sales skyrocketed. In 1996, sales from OxyContin were 45 million dollars; and by 2010, sales had escalated to 3.1 billion dollars. The video did not disclose to doctors that OxyContin was a few molecules away from being synthetic heroin, and shortly after being distributed, cunning addicts figured a way around the time release component, to get the heroin-like rush. Now addicts had a means of getting an opiate drug by legal means, which had very lethal consequences. One study that was performed in the state of Washington, found that