Pur­due Phar­ma pleads guilty in fed­er­al Oxy­Con­tin probe, for­mal­ly rec­og­niz­ing it played a part in the opi­oid cri­sis

Pur­due Phar­ma, the pro­duc­er of the pre­scrip­tion painkiller Oxy­Con­tin, ad­mit­ted Tues­day that, yes, it did con­tribute to Amer­i­ca’s opi­oid epi­dem­ic.

The drug­mak­er for­mal­ly plead­ed guilty to three crim­i­nal charges, the AP re­port­ed, in­clud­ing get­ting in the way of the DEA’s ef­forts to com­bat the cri­sis, fail­ing to pre­vent the painkillers from end­ing up on the black mar­ket and en­cour­ag­ing doc­tors to write more painkiller pre­scrip­tions through two meth­ods: pay­ing them in a speak­ers pro­gram and di­rect­ing a med­ical records com­pa­ny to send them cer­tain pa­tient in­for­ma­tion. Pur­due’s plea deal calls for $8.3 bil­lion in crim­i­nal fines and penal­ties, but the com­pa­ny is on­ly li­able for a frac­tion of that to­tal — $225 mil­lion.

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