Duragesic Addiction News: New Evidence Proves that 18 Years Ago, Johnson & Johnson Was Aware that Its Opioid Patches were Being Abused
Everyone has become all too familiar with the nation’s ever-worsening opioid epidemic in recent years. Yet new court evidence shows that as early as 2001, executives at Janssen, the pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson, were aware that Duragesic, their company’s opioid and the first fentanyl patch on the market, was being abused.
In February of the same year, the New York Times published an extensive investigation into the abuse of OxyContin, the painkiller manufactured by Purdue Pharma. In the weeks that followed, it appears that doctors questioned Janssen on whether Duragesic could be abused as well.
When an employee of Janssen circulated a draft of a letter for physicians about the drug’s abuse potential, Janssen’s Vice President of Analgesia Steve Zollo pushed back.
He asked for an explanation of why the company had to go through “such painstaking detail around every single published report on Duragesic abuse.”
He then added that their problem is because of the growing scrutiny of Oxycontin abuse, which made physicians want to compare the relative risk against Duragesic.
He continued: Let’s be clear about this matter — As the use of Duragesic continues to rise (and it will), so will drug abusers trying to find imaginative ways to extract fentanyl from the patch. That’s why it’s considered a scheduled drug.
As our consumption goes up, so will the published reports of abuse. If we want to report each case in the literature, this memo will grow much longer than the current seven pages. If we feel inclined to provide information about any of our products to the point that can be found on the Internet than Dave, you don’t have sufficient people.
The emails were featured in a collection of exhibits included in federal litigation in which countless municipalities are suing opioid makers and distributors for kindling an overdose crisis. The case is supposed to go to trial in October in Cleveland. (Last month, in a separate incident, a judge in Oklahoma found J&J responsible for helping fuel the crisis and ordered it to pay $572 million in fines.)
Additionally, among the exhibits in the federal litigation was a 2003 report by consulting firm Sacoor Medical Group provided for Janssen. It concluded that from 2001 to 2002, the data shows that fentanyl abuse is on the rise and, sadly, abusers of the reservoir patch who experiment and, in many cases, overdose, sometimes end up dead.
J&J counsel Sabrina Strong said that the company “responsibly marketed and monitored their patch Duragesic, which data show was among the least abused, misused and diverted Schedule II opioids. She added that any drug could be abused, and Janssen took seriously its responsibility to check abuse, misuse, and diversion.
The surge of opioid litigation has brought about new scrutiny of J&J, a company most Americans link with household staples like soap and baby powder. The allegations against J&J fall into two categories.
The first is that, like countless other pharmaceutical companies, J&J underplayed the addictive effects of its opioid products, Duragesic and Nucynta, and heavily marketed the drugs to high-volume prescribers.
The second: J&J subsidiaries were crucial players in the opioid supply chain, growing poppies in Tasmania and selling narcotics to leading drug companies, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.
By 2016, when J&J sold subsidiary Noramco to a private investment firm, Noramco was supposedly the nation’s top supplier of opioids, including oxycodone (found in OxyContin and Percocet), hydrocodone (found in Vicodin), codeine, and morphine.
A 2015 presentation prepared for Noramco’s sale, also included in the exhibits, promotes the opportunity for prospective purchasers.
Photos of poppies and factories dot the presentation, which explains that J&J formed Noramco in the late 1970s to secure a supply of ingredients for Tylenol with Codeine, and it grew to become the “#1 supplier of Narcotic [active pharmaceutical ingredients] in the United States, the world’s largest market.”
As of 2015, Noramco had an “excellent compliance record,” according to the presentation, and was focused on “expansion of synthetic controlled substances for ADD/ADHD.” At the end of one section of the presentation, the words “Thank You!” are superimposed on a photo of a field of poppies.
J&J has consistently argued that Noramco’s output was tightly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The company also contested that it wasn’t responsible for the manufacturing or sales of opioids made by other companies using Noramco ingredients. The company denied wrongdoing throughout the Oklahoma trial and said it had been made a “scapegoat.”
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