> When the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin in late 1995, the agency permitted Purdue Pharma to make a unique claim for it — that its long-acting

> When the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin in late 1995, the agency permitted Purdue Pharma to make a unique claim for it — that its long-acting formulation was “believed to reduce” its appeal to drug abusers compared with shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin. It seems like both the FDA and Purdue thought / hoped it would be less addictive, but this was not to be the case. And after it became clear from real-world data that this was not true, the FDA still didn't do anything about it? > a Canadian physician, Dr. Brian Goldman, wrote that the findings turned thinking about the supposed safety of long-acting opioids like OxyContin on its head by showing that drug abusers “coveted” such drugs. “This should ring alarm bells,” Dr. Goldman, who was then a paid speaker for Purdue Pharma, wrote in the editorial. Why wouldn't the FDA act on this alarm? Why would we rely on a pharmaceutical company to police its own drug when there is a clearly a massive conflict of interest? Isn't this what the FDA is for?