The state of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma that alleges extraordinary efforts to saturate the country with prescriptions for its opioid painkillers.

Stat reports that newly public details from the suit allege that in 1996, when Oxycontin hit the market, Dr. Richard Sackler told attendees at the drug launch party that the drug's appearance on the public stage “will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”

Sackler, a member of the family that launched Purdue who was a company executive at the time, also had an answer in 2001 when there were questions about addiction and overdoses resulting from the use of Oxycontin and other opioids: blame the victims. According to the report, Sackler sent an e-mail in which he said, “We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”

According to the state's 312-page complaint, “By their misconduct, the Sacklers have hammered Massachusetts families in every way possible.” It points out that since 2007, in Massachusetts alone, Purdue sold more than 70 million doses of opioids for more than $500 million. “And the stigma they used as a weapon made the crisis worse,” the suit adds.

Purdue also had arrangements with both Tufts University's Health Sciences Campus and Massachusetts General Hospital, providing $3 million to Massachusetts General and proposing curriculum and an employee to Tufts who was made an adjunct professor.

In addition, the suit alleges that Purdue “deceived Massachusetts doctors and patients to get more and more people on its dangerous drugs;” it “misled them to use higher and more dangerous doses;” and “deceived them to stay on its drugs for longer and more harmful periods of time” even as it “peddled falsehoods to keep patients away from safer alternatives.”

Purdue, for its part, has pointed out that the medications were FDA-approved and government-regulated, and that the state attorney general has not included data on steps taken by Purdue to advance appropriate, safe use of opioids.

In the report, Purdue is quoted saying, “To distract from these omissions of fact and the other numerous deficiencies of its claims, the Attorney General has cherry-picked from among tens of millions of emails and other business documents produced by Purdue. The complaint is littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations of these documents and individual defendants, often highlighting potential courses of action that were ultimately rejected by the company.”

It also seeks to have documents it submitted in federal court on a confidential basis remain sealed in the state filing.

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New lawsuit unveils scope of Purdue's 'extraordinary efforts' to push opioids

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