OxyContin Maker Fined Continued

Purdue Pharma said the company accepted responsibility for the actions of CEO Michael Friedman, general counsel Howard Udell, and ex chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim, and said the firm had "implemented changes to our internal training, compliance and monitoring systems that seek to assure that similar events do not occur again."

Brownlee said that Purdue Pharma officials knew for years that the drug was highly susceptible to abuse. "Even in the face of warnings from health care professionals, the media, and members of its own sales force that OxyContin was being widely abused and causing harm to our citizens, Purdue, under the leadership of its top executives, continued to push a fraudulent marketing campaign that promoted Oxycontin as less addictive, less subject to abuse, and less likely to cause withdrawal," said Brownlee.

However, the company stressed that the agreement had no relation to charges that Purdue Pharma was complicit in diversion of OxyContin to the illicit market.
The money from the settlement will go to the U.S. government ($276 million), state and federal Medicaid programs ($160 million), a Virginia prescription monitoring program, and individual plaintiffs who sued the company ($130 million), among others.¤

Recovering Alcoholic Makes Amends, Goes to Jail

A former alcoholic who admitted to a 20-year-old sexual assault as part of his recovery pled guilty to aggravated sexual battery and faces two years in prison under a plea deal.

William Beebe, 41, was working through the ninth step of Alcoholics Anonymous -- making amends to those who he had wronged -- when he contacted a former classmate at the University of Virginia and apologized for his role in a sexual assault at a fraternity party in 1984. Beebe wrote Liz Seccuro last year and said, in part, "I want to make clear that I'm not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you. I did."

Seccuro, now 39, later contacted police in Charlottesville, and prosecutors filed charges against Beebe. Virginia has no statute of limitations for felonies. She said she was upset because Beebe's account of the attack did not match her recollection of the savagery of the incident.

When first arrested, Beebe claimed he was innocent, but he changed his stance in court. "Twenty-two years ago I harmed another person, and I have tried to set that right," Beebe said in pleading guilty. ¤