Thursday, August 09, 2007
Editorial: Atoning for corporate sins
Companies that contribute to prescription drug abuse should contribute to efforts to curb that abuse.
From the RoundTable blog
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What poetic justice that $20 million of Purdue Pharma's $634.5 million fine be designated to a statewide database that allows health care professionals to identify patients who might be abusing prescription drugs.
Purdue Pharma will pay to help root out the very kind of abuse to which the drugmaker contributed -- as it admitted when it pleaded guilty to overpromoting its powerful painkiller OxyContin.
Virginia's Prescription Monitoring Program is poised to significantly enhance efforts to identify and prevent illegal use of prescription drugs such as OxyContin. Interest from Purdue Pharma's $20 million is expected to help cover program operating costs; and a $400,000 federal grant, announced Tuesday by Gov. Tim Kaine, will enable around-the-clock program access.
Money from Purdue Pharma will help sustain a program that aims to deter prescription drug abuse through "doctor shopping." The federal grant will ensure 24-hour, seven-day-a-week program access in emergency rooms, urgent care centers and 24-hour pharmacies.
That is a crucial program enhancement. "There are still deaths, and still drug abuse and misuse," says Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Virginia Department of Health Professions.
Purdue Pharma was pulled in the direction of atonement years ago, when it agreed to what this newspaper described as "a series of measures aimed at stemming the tide of addiction and drug-related crime in Southwest Virginia."
Those measures included producing and distributing "tamper resistant" prescription pads for physicians in areas hit hardest by OxyContin abuse -- and spending $100,000 to fund a study of prescription monitoring programs in other states.
Surely Purdue Pharma expected that more measures eventually would be laid at its feet.
It is appropriate then, for a drugmaker that contributed to prescription drug abuse to contribute to a tool that aims to curb the scourge of drug addiction, and the crime and death associated with it.
