Word: drugging
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...years probation and 400 hours of community service to serve instead. Federal Judge James P. Jones ordered the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin and the three executives to pay a $634.5 million fine for misleading doctors about the narcotic's risk of addiction. The company had touted the drug as less addictive than more traditional narcotics, despite the fact that the pill can easily be crushed and converted into a powerful street drug...
...president, lawyer Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Dr. Paul Goldenheim had pleaded guilty in May, in return for accepting the fine. The surprise from today's ruling was the inclusion of the community service penalty - each man will have to serve his 400 hours working in drug abuse prevention or treatment, which would amount two and a half months of 40-hour work weeks spent fulfilling the sentence...
...explosive issue here in the southwest Virginia, which like much of Appalachia, had long suffered from a wave of addiction to the drug. More than 100 people gathered at a morning rally in a town park to tell their stories about the prescription drug before moving to the courthouse. In the afternoon, many of them would be in the courtroom, giving victim statements in front of the pharmaceutical executives and the judge...
Those individual costs mounted for communities throughout Appalachia. Federal authorities in Virginia began investigating Purdue about five years ago when crime, addiction and death rates skyrocketed in the mountainous part of the state. "This is a fine of insignificance when we look at the consequences that this drug has had not only in this area but around the country," said Sister Beth Davies, director of the Addiction Education Center in neighboring Lee County. "No one is being held accountable. The penalty in no way fits the crime...
Davies said she first took notice of the drug in 1999. By 2001, she said there was such rampant drug abuse that her group, Lee County Coalition for Health, met with Purdue Pharma and asked the company to recall and reformat the drug. She said the company particularly targeted southwestern Virginia because of its high Medicaid and disability rates. A lot of coal miners suffered from pain, for example, and they were among the prime targets of Purdue's risky marketing. "This has changed the face of Appalachia," Davies said. "The foster care rate, the crime rate, we never...