One of the allegations in the lawsuit is
- OxyContin’s sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a molecule nearly identical to heroin. Purdue later introduced another dangerous drug, Butrans, which releases opioids into the body from a skin patch. Then Purdue introduced Hysingla, which contains yet another opioid. Almost all of Purdue’s business is selling opioids.
Here’s Heroin
Here’s Codeine
and here’s Oxycodone
what’s the legal threshold for molecules being nearly identical?
The individual who was worth 200k/year in profits could have also been re-selling part or all of what was obtained. Alternately, that addict could have been a wealthy patient who paid completely non-discounted rates for the pill, because it helped convince someone in the sales chain’s bottom line to ignore an obviously unhealthy amount of pills prescribed. It could be less pills at a higher price. Or the addict had an insurance plan that could be defrauded to overpay or double pay, so a corrupt doctor could bill for less pills than they gave out. I’m sure the court records will eventually make the outline of this example known.
These kind of sales spikes happened because Purdue was micro-targeting doctors with high prescription volumes in order to then encourage them to go prescribe more. In a sane world that system would have been used only to identify corrupted doctors, not to give them sales bonuses and more Oxy.
If an addict has a house before they become addicted, they will sell that house. People liquidate whatever assets they had, and Oxy addicts cut across all tax brackets. 200k in a single year wouldn’t need a Las Vegas heist.
Insurance covers the cost of hepatitis cure which cost close to 100k. There must be cases where insurance pays 200k plus.
I’ve had a few serious opioid addicts in my life and that doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. I knew a few people on 5-7 pills a day who were still functionally employed. The idea that one individual could get substantially higher doesn’t seem that odd. Also remember that with opiates a lot of the street product is not as marked up as you might think given that diversion is such a huge source and oxy faces strong price competition from heroin.
The math could easily add up if the addicted person were selling the drug on the side to finance his addiction. He needn’t be taking all the pills himself.
It’s a complicated question. As I understand it, a patent claim on a molecule can cover variations involving “trivial” substitutions of (at least) alkyl functional groups, meaning, I can’t legally make a version of a patented drug just by replacing an ethyl side chain with a propyl. But the exact details of this evolve as people sue each other.
If you were accused of having cocaine in your car, but proved that it was actually chloro-cocaine or whatever, whether you’d broken the law would depend on how the law was written, and probably on expert witness testimony.
Chemically, molecules are either identical or they’re not. Generally speaking, with a largish molecule like heroin, you would assume that replacing just one or two functional groups might well result in a similar drug, but it’s not guaranteed; some small changes can totally change a molecule’s biological effects, and most changes will at least affect how it’s metabolised. Adding and removing alcohol and ketone groups (as shown above) usually makes more difference than just changing alkyl groups, since the former are more reactive and have dipole moments that could significantly affect solubilities and interactions with enzymes and stuff.
The short version is, you can’t tell anything for sure about drug effects just by comparing molecular structures, and most (bio)chemists would agree the differences shown are not trivial.
That’s what it costs the addicts. Add: unreimbursed ambulance visits, ER visits, Narcan, and rural hospitals going bankrupt due to addict traffic.
Add: trailer, apartment, home, and furniture fires and fire department visits because addicts almost always smoke cigarettes and they do crash with lit cigs in their hands.
Add: time spent off work and money spent by families and SOs of addicts due to addiction shenanigans, including but not even limited to OD funeral expenses.
Add: personal property thefts, lost pawn income, policing, courts, and prison costs.
Every-damn-body should be suing Purdue.
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