Purdue Pharma: Fueling the U.S. Opioid Epidemic. Research Paper Example.

The Purdue Pharma L.P. is among the largest privately owned pharmaceutical corporations in the United States. Additionally, since its inception, the corporation has faced numerous legal and public clamors for its role in fueling the nations opioid epidemic. In 2007, the corporation was levied a $600 million fine for intentionally mislabeling its opioid product OxyContin. Moreover, over the years, Purdue Pharma L.P.s OxyContin contributed to the deaths of hundreds of the drug users as a pain sedative for chronic pain. This research addresses the issue affecting Purdue Pharma L.P., outlines the stakeholders involved, and also discusses the applicable norms of action that should be taken by the corporation. Additionally, the research discusses how competitors of Purdue Corporation have handled the same issue, provides a solution resolution for the issue and issues a supporting statement of why the resolution should be adopted.

Introduction and Stakeholder Analysis

Purdue Pharma L.P. and its competitors are involved in marketing their prescription drugs for uses that are not approved by U.S. drug regulators. Consequently, this has fueled the opioids epidemic in the United States and other parts of the world. Furthermore, the Purdue Pharma L.P. rivals that have also been charged with fueling opioid epidemic includes the Abbott Labs, Covidien, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Watson Pharmaceuticals as well as Novartis. Additionally, these corporations are the issue stakeholders that produced products, which contained opioid elements in their composition. The United States Food and Drug Enforcement Agency is the primary regulatory authority that has been involved in controlling the marketing of opioids-constituted drugs by pharmaceutical corporations in the nation.

Moreover, the aggressive move by the government to control the opioids epidemic in the United States greatly affected the trading operations of these stated stakeholders in retailing their opioids-constituted drugs. This phenomenon was documented by the successful prosecution of Purdue Pharma L.P. in 2007 for its OxyContin product, which is believed to have contributed to the occurrence of a large number of deaths. Additionally, there is one primary consequence that will be evidenced if the issue of selling addictive opioids like OxyContin will not be controlled. First, the drugs will contribute to the continued deaths of millions of painkiller users from corporations, like Purdue Pharma L.P., in the United and other parts of the world. This is because most users of such drugs have been linked to opioids overdoes in an effort to control their pain. Also, it has been ascertained that drug overdose kills more people than the total number of people killed through gun homicides as well as car crashes combined.

Furthermore, according to research done in 2015, approximately two-thirds of all overdose-related deaths have a single thing in common; opioids usage. Also, based on a research report published by NIH, the opioid epidemic initially started as a regional crisis but eventually progressed into a national crisis. Furthermore, NIH research stated that the opioid drugs had been ascertained as being able to addict and even kill mostly due to overdose. Additionally, according to the research, opioids drugs have become a national emergency that claims approximately 90 lives on a daily basis. Ultimately, such statistics portray the negative repercussions of failing to control the problem of harmful opioids usage among the public members.

Applicable Norms

Today, most persons living with chronic pain experience an immense suffering because their painful state is not effectively treated. Nevertheless, the heightened abuse of pharmaceutical opioids when prescribed as pain medications has generated critical negative outcomes, which are inclusive of opioids overdose, addiction, and death. In light of this, Purdue Pharma should adopt interventions aimed at promoting the responsible use of opioids. The corporation should also adopt methodologies aimed at preventing the diversion, misuse as well as abuse of prescription opioids on the pretense of using them for chronic pain management. The continued manufacturing of opioids for the clinical purpose by Purdue Pharma L.P. raises a major ethical concern. This is in whether such drugs are the best for chronic pain management due to the numerous unfavorable effects they cause on a patient. For instance, opioids are highly addictive; they cause respiratory depression, they cause too much nausea and have a narrow therapeutic range. Additionally, the usage of opioids for medical treatment raises a primary question on human rights on whether opioids poses health care benefits or demerits to patients.

This is because there are too many disadvantages that are associated with the opioids usage in comparison to its primary advantage as effective pain relievers, especially for patients with terminal pains. Moreover, in 2014, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) launched new guidelines that were aimed at reducing the total number of opioid-related deaths recorded in different parts of the world. Such were deaths associated with opioid overdose due to drugs like morphine, heroin as well as painkillers like Oxycodone. In this case, WHO new guidelines recommended that medical institutions should expand their supply of inexpensive medication naloxone to patients who were likely to experience an opioid overdose. Additionally, according to WHO (2014) recommendations, the issuance of Naloxone to such patients should have been accompanied to by adequate training in the management in how to manage the opioid overdose13. Ultimately, in light of these findings, Purdue Pharma L.P. should try to ensure that all its products are complacent with the FDA and DEA policies pertaining pharmaceutical drugs that should be employed for clinical purposes.

Best Practice On the Issue

Purdue Pharma major competitors like Abbott Labs, Covidien, Pfizer, and Novartis among others have all faced the problem of opioids critic by stakeholders such as the government healthcare agencies and medical practitioners among others. Additionally, their continued production of opioids has greatly affected the legitimacy of such corporations mostly due to the increased pressure exacted against addictive opioids manufacturing by various government agencies. As a result, some of the pharmaceutical corporations in the United States have tried to address the problem by creating new alternatives for medicating chronic pain among patients. For Instance, Abbott Labs has been greatly involved in the production of neuromodulation equipment, which is an alternative treatment used for chronic pain. Additionally, neuromodulation therapy involves sending of electrical signals to particular body nerves as a way of treating pain. Moreover, this move by Abbott Labs has enabled the corporation to improve its legitimacy among its shareholders amid the heightened concern pertaining the opioids epidemic in the United States.

Shareholder Resolution

In an effort to manage the opioids epidemic issue facing the Purdue Pharma L.P., the corporation should start producing the neuromodulation equipment as an effective alternative strategy for treating chronic pain. Additionally, the neuromodulation therapy technique uses advanced clinical device technologies in order to suppress the activities of the bodys nervous system during the treatment of chronic pain. In this case, the Purdue Pharma corporation should create implantable and non-implantable devices that can be employed by the physicians to administer electrical as well as chemical stimulation to the brain and nerve cells. Moreover, some examples of neuromodulation equipment that Purdue Pharma L.P. should start developing may include Transcranial Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields (tPEMF) devices, Sacral Nerve Stimulation (SNS) devices as well as Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) devices. Nevertheless, the cost of producing such equipment will be higher for the Purdue Pharma L.P corporation than the cost incurred by the company in manufacturing pharmaceutical opioids.

Also, it is projected that the increased manufacturing costs associated with the development of neuromodulation technologies will increase the cost of manufacturing for Purdue Pharma L.C. by 75% over its current manufacturing costs. However, the company is expected to save more in terms of its unforeseeable expenses that are otherwise incurred due to lawsuits and related expenses associated with opioids manufacturing and retail. Additionally, such neuromodulation technologies can be effectively implemented within an appropriate timeframe of one year starting from January 1, 2018. Furthermore, the Purdue Pharma L.P. has sufficient financial resources to accommodate the new inventions in its manufacturing process. Furthermore, the recruitment of persons with competent skills to develop and manufacture the neuromodulation devices for the corporation is expected to last for a maximum of two months. In this case, the short time frame will be sufficient due to the large pool of qualified human resource in the market with the right skills to create neuromodulation intervention devices.

Moreover, this resolution will be appropriate because it conforms to the United Kingdoms (UK) legal requirement for medical inventions. Also, the creation of neuromodulation technologies by the Purdue Pharma will add value to the corporations image that has been tainted in the past from being involved in the opioid epidemic. Ultimately, the resolution will offer protection to the shareholders value through an elevated accrued interest on their shareholders upon the completion and retail of the neuromodulation devices for chronic pain control.

Supporting Statement

In 2012, a survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health, which was deemed as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) portrayed that 40 million persons in the United States reported having severe pains. Additionally, the survey also found out that approximately 23 million adults in the United States reported having experienced severe pains on a daily basis. Also, almost all the patients that were interviewed reported having been prescribed with opioids to relieve their pain. This is despite the statistics that were collected in the nation that showed that approximately 40 adults die annually as a result of opioids overdose. Additionally, this elevated critical risk of using opioids has prepped the stage for the adoption of safer and effective pain management methodologies like neuromodulation devices in the United States. Consequently, this means that the shareholders of the Purdue Pharma corporation should adopt neuromodulation devices as an alternative resolution for pain management in place of opioids.

Moreover, the development of neuromodulation technologies as alternatives for opioids in the treatment and management of chronic pain will have a substantial financial implication to the Purdue Pharma corporation. Additionally, the move will also elevate the value of the corporations shareholders after the neuromodulation devices have been successfully created and retailed in the market. This is because the use of neuromodulation devices in pain management is gradually continuing to increase in its popularity as an effective and affordable alternative to opioids. In a study that was conducted in 2017 involving a sample population of 5400 patients with chronic pains, it was evidenced that 93% of the patients reduced or stabilized their daily opioids intake. This was after they were introduced to SCS therapy intervention, which is one form of neuromodu...