News McKinsey Guided Companies at the Center of the Opioid Crisis

[thegreenhand]

McKinsey Guided Companies at the Center of the Opioid Crisis​

Chris Hamby, Michael Forsythe
New York Times
29 Jun 2022

Excerpt:

In patches of rural Appalachia and the Rust Belt, the health authorities were sounding alarms that a powerful painkiller called Opana had become the drug of choice among people abusing prescription pills.

It was twice as potent as OxyContin, the painkiller widely blamed for sparking the opioid crisis, and was relatively easy to dissolve and inject. By 2015, government investigations and scientific publications had linked its misuse to clusters of disease, including a rare and life-threatening blood disorder and an H.I.V. outbreak in Indiana.

Opana’s manufacturer, the pharmaceutical company Endo, had scaled back promotion of the drug. But months later, the company abruptly changed course, refocusing resources on the drug by assigning more sales representatives.

The push was known internally as the Sales Force Blitz — and it was conducted with consultants at McKinsey & Company, who had been hired by Endo to provide marketing advice about its chronic-pain medicines and other products.

 

[jasperkent]

Opana....mmmmmmm ❤


But yeah, those things were cunningly evil.

 

[thegreenhand]

McKinsey Never Told the FDA It Was Working for Opioid Makers While Also Working for the Agency

The consulting giant was helping Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson fend off FDA regulations even as it helped shape FDA drug policy.

www.propublica.org

More coverage, written last year