Purdue Pharma was fined $643.5 million in 2007 for its part in creating the opioid epidemic that has plagued the US for the last decade. The punishment was meted out on the back of a marketing campaign that denied that its Oxycontin product was dangerously addictive.
Fast forward over 10 years and the US is still suffering the catastrophic effects of the opioid crisis. It was calculated that in 2015 alone, the high levels of addiction to opioids cost the economy $504 billion – putting the large fine that Purdue faced firmly in the shadow.
