Purdue pays billions in fine: US pharmaceutical giant admits guilt in opioid crisis

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from an oxycontin overdose in the past two decades. The pain reliever manufacturer Purdue is said to be to blame for this. The company is now admitting its mistakes and paying a hefty fine.

In the dispute over the massive prescription of opiate painkillers, the US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma pleads guilty and pays a billion-dollar fine. The company admits in court violations of the law in the production and distribution of its drug Oxycontin, as the US Department of Justice announced. In return for payments totaling 8.3 billion dollars (around seven billion euros), criminal and civil investigations against the group in the opioid crisis are suspended.

The Sackler family, who built Purdue Pharma into a large corporation, pays an additional $ 225 million fine. The vice director of the Federal Police FBI, Steven D'Antuono, accused Purdue of "greed and violations of the law". The company put "money above the health and well-being of patients".

Purdue Pharma has pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud and breach of kickback rules in the healthcare sector. Many experts attribute the opioid crisis in the US to over-prescribing pain relievers such as Oxycontin, which until the mid-1990s were reserved for the treatment of the critically ill.

The manufacturers and US pharmacies are accused of having aggressively advertised the products and not responding to warning signs of the addiction crisis. Since the late 1990s, more than 450,000 people in the United States have died as a result of opioid overdoses. This includes both prescribed pain medication and illegal drugs like heroin.