Former Pharmaceutical Rep Details How Oxycontin Took Over

The Joe Rogan Experience the other thing they did the only thing that I saw in Pharma personally that was shady is they would they would do these courses on never off label promote don't talk about this don't talk about that and you would sign all these documents saying I'm not going to talk about this yeah definitely and then a week later have us come listen to a thought leader in the field off label promoting all the [ __ ] they told us not to talk about explain off-label promotions so uh let me think of an example uh an example would be Zyprexa and they got exposed for this on Zyprexa Zyprexa was indicated essentially for let me I'll do it a better one if you look at Oxycontin how did Oxycontin take over the marketplace it's because what they did is they got the Reps to go out and begin to recommend oxy so originally oxy was meant for people who were like terminally ill with cancer and were in severe pain or somebody who's on the upper echelon of the pain threshold and the goal of a company and a rep is to grow the market and to hit the number and so when you go go out it's like how do you grow the market well we're going to grow the patient demographic we're going to have to grow we're getting we need the doctors to write more of this so what they did with Oxycontin was they went out and started it got to a point where they were literally promoting it for people with migraines uh and they were put pumping these pain pills into all these practices was this before or after it had been proven that it was highly addictive um they knew it was highly addictive based off the study so I know you and I have talked about toxic but let me all the story on this family is absolutely insane so the family that owned uh Oxycontin is one of the richest families in the country they're up there with the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts they made all of their wealth in the 1960s by creating the volume pandemic they launched Valium into the marketplace told people that it was non-addictive non-abusive grew the market they were writing Valiums for headaches Valiums for knees shoulder elbow pain and it created they they went under governmental investigation the government ended up investigating the family in the 60s and then jump forward they they get off they buy their way out of that jump forward and this is another thing we'll talk there's so many data points uh their patent on hydrocodone was expiring so big Pharma does this a lot and I'll get into this like they they say we innovate but it costs 10 times we make tenfold on one drug because we innovate and so many go by the wayside they don't innovate they re-engineer and reapply and like Zyprexa uh got combined with symbiaks to EXT Two drugs that were already on the market to extend the patent right so the goal is to play this shell game where you when your patent's close to expiring you have to reapply and extend the patent via a new indication or some sort of new combination of a couple of different products and so hydrocodone was expiring the hydrocodone oxy like long delivery system was it or uh the cotton system was expiring so what they did is they looked at their revenues and they're like we're [ __ ] like we we can't we won't hit our numbers we can't continue these growth trajectories unless we get a new patent on a new pain med so they went out and they said what else is out there that we could put into our patented delivery system and the answer was oxy and the problem with that is it's 10 times more addictive than Hydrocodone so then you go okay well they're going to have to do safety studies and prove it in humans and show that it's not addictive not abusive nope human study never happened they were able to piggyback on their hydrocodone cotton delivery system take the delivery mechanism and all it is is basically the ground up the powder and they create layers So in theory if you take the pill you won't get 100 milligrams of oxy at once it'll over eight hours dissolve into your body and you'll get that absorption that was the premise and so they said because of our patented delivery system this drug is non-abusive non-addictive we have a great safety profile uh the other thing that happened is they went to the FDA and this is where there's a lot of [ __ ] they they literally met with the head of the FDA at the time after hours at a hotel this is all documented now and he helped them draft their application then rubber stamped it and pushed it through and gave Oxycontin the golden [ __ ] ticket he put in the label that Oxycontin is less likely to be addictive or abusive compared to other opioids in the market and then you give a rep that and you set them out in a Marketplace and you give them a twenty thousand dollar a month expense account and you have them taken guys to dinner drinking wine and eating steaks and they show in the label hey we're less addictive this is a safe drug we've got to stop pain you know let's let's really this isn't just any more for the cancer patient this is anybody in your practice who has pain we're on a mission to stop pain and all of them started getting addicted I mean it was rampant and the the system was trash because once you grind up the pill you've just circumvented the delivery mechanism and now it's super addictive because they're going to get high doses of an opioid and that's what a lot of people were doing that were abusing him right they were grinding it up and snorting it out and then they it reminded me a lot with covid because what happened is patients were doctors were blowing the company up Purdue Pharma as the name of the company and the families the sacklers so the Sackler family this is all documented now and also Jamie anything I bring up I've put on the ways to well website slash JRE uh because we're gonna go over a lot of stuff so any data point or study or any of that I bring up is available on the website um what they did was uh the Sackler family ended up taking a agreement with the U.S government and part of that deal was they would pay I think three billion dollars and then there was no uh they could not prosecute them or come after them criminally and it was done so they was just set a three billion dollars go well they made I think nine or 12 billion nine to two billion I can't remember the number but the three that I don't know if it goes to the family or the government I don't know I'm not sure where at all if it went to the families of people and this hits close to home for me because my brother died of opioids my brother died at 27. man and it's I watched that documentary and it makes me want to [ __ ] vomit I'm just like and it and it's not just the sacklers it's you know Johnson and Johnson they're known for their diapers and their uh no teary eyes baby soap Johnson and Johnson made more than anybody during the opioid pandemic they were literally growing they were doing what people doing the marijuana trade they were turning basically juicing up and synthetically altering opioid plants to grow faster and more potent so they could turn them over quicker and so they supplied all the Opium into the United States and made billions of dollars billions of dollars and the FDA uh at this point in time the uh DEA was getting involved going to the FDA going to all these governmental bodies and saying look this shit's getting crazy like this is getting out of control the addiction rates are through the roof what Purdue did at that time was pivot and go out and educate doctors on breakthrough pain these patients aren't addicted they're just still in pain and the way to fix it is to write a more opioids so they launched a 200 milligram pill and gave people more opioids oh my God there's a tragic uh that the one that is dope sick is is like a docu-series but it's not a documentary it's like we're a fictional reality yeah um there is a documentary documentary and it's tragic it's this Mormon family and he talks about this is the level of bravado that Physicians oftentimes have his wife they grew up Mormon and they had been married they had multiple kids and the story is his wife got in a car wreck injured her neck and was doing okay she was seeing a primary care doctor and a neighbor said you need to go to the pain clinic and go meet Dr so and so long story short he puts her on oxy he puts her on a bunch of other meds uh she ends up passing out all over the house the husband's like taking pictures of her to document for the doctor and she ends up in the ER at one point after she gets out they put her in rehab they get her clean again and that Doctor's practice reaches back out and asks to meet with the family and the wife this is like a true story in this docu-series and when when the doctor meets with them and I've seen stuff like this happen the doctor said I and I alone will make the medical decisions on my patient not you so are we on the same page here and this this guy said I looked him in the eye and I said yes sir anyways the guy's wife OD'd and died like literally a month later and so they're suing the doctor they're suing his practice so the doctor got her back on pills doctor got it back on pills and what was his justification what's this is where it gets so tough because when you're in it like when I was in it like erectile dysfunction in in Viagra like I said Cialis that's fun right but some of the drugs you're you are really passionate about like and so I I think he I do believe that there's good and bad in every person right and sometimes people's egos get in the way and he's probably been to course after course I mean the narrative they spent in this is he made hundreds of thousands of dollars in Consulting fees from Purdue Pharma and was paid as a consultant and over a time span made I think like three or four hundred thousand dollars off Purdue Pharma and so of course he's gonna push Purdue pharma's product um is is the narrative but what I saw a lot was you begin to drink the Kool-Aid and bleed the belief if that makes sense um like this is we're changing the world we're gonna launch these pain meds in there because you're being financially incentivized for it so you have a reason to think you have a reason to be skewed and then you're opening the door to let yourself be educated in a biased manner does that make sense you're only listening to half the narrative and that's a problem uh and a lot of times Physicians are listening to the big Pharma company rather than their patients God damn so I mean I experienced that like we had a drug um Strattera um and it it wasn't like a dangerous drug it was a really safe drug meant to treat children with ADHD and I was passionate about it like I believed in it because I [ __ ] failed kindergarten I literally went to pre first there were kids in my class with helmets because I was ADHD and dyslexic and at the time the only thing on the market was Ritalin and they said we want your son on ritalin or we're recommending that he goes to like special education basically uh so I had to go to a brief first and and then not jump forward I'm 23 and had graduated college and I'm making great money and I see this drug that is non-abusive non-addictive that we could be using to treat ADHD in kids and have them not go through all the headaches that I went through as like an ADHD kid I was like this is amazing instead of Adderall and all these stuff um and so you bleed it like you get really passionate about it when you buy in and nothing bad ever happened with that drug it wasn't as efficacious as the company presented it to be it didn't seem to work as effectively um it's not always the case though I mean is there a lot of times a drug other than Cialis yeah which really does what it advertises yeah but is there are there I mean that's kind of always the case that they exaggerate the benefits well the biggest challenge is not only the exaggeration potentially of the benefits it's the if they begin to re-engineer or apply it to a different disease State um I'm trying to think of an example that would be a good one to give you they can they can take a drug and the patent's about to expire all right so let's say they have a year left on the patent at that point the company will begin to say how do we extend the patents so we can continue to get insurance coverage and get paid and hit our numbers for Wall Street we've got to get another indication so when they resubmit for a new indication based off just efficacy they do not have to go back and do safety studies and so they don't do human trials and so what they're doing is they're they're piggybacking but the dosages may change the disease States change the patient population's changed yeah it may have been safe you know as uh osteoporosis drug and 60 year old women but is it safe now that you're using it in a 20 year old girl you know like that's the type stuff that happens all the time um and the guy who approved Purdue Pharma this is the craziest part the one who helped them draft their agreement and all that guess where he went to work 18 months later Purdue Pharma making 300 Grand a year which is always the case whether it's in the financial sector or in medical yeah right that's what they do they always wind up working for some enormous Corporation after they set the regulations that would benefit that Corporation they get a cushion job yeah I think it was um 12 out of the last 15 heads of the FDA have taken jobs with in Private Industry for a big medical or big Pharma God and so I I will say being behind the scenes it's the same I've heard you say this about police officers 90 of people I think are trying to do good they're good people but there are outliers in every capacity of Life period just because somebody works for the government doesn't mean they're good and just because somebody's a doctor doesn't mean they're good and just because somebody's a rep doesn't mean they're bad I didn't see very many bad reps like there weren't I didn't see unethical when I say bad I mean like I didn't see a lot of unethical reps they existed like I'm not saying they didn't but not disproportionately any more than I saw in the rest of society

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 3,280,797

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, JRE, Joe, Rogan, podcast, MMA, comedy, stand, up, funny, Freak, Party

Id: VnL7XWH8uoA

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/natiboken]

This is fucking bizarre because I was thinking to myself this morning how could people openly embrace these Covid MRNA gene therapies after the Opioid Crisis being all over the fucking news for a couple years before Covid?

The government and pharma companies said opioids were safe and effective.

How well did that turn out?

Now they are telling you the same shit re these MRNA gene therapies and the dumbasses are all rolling up their sleeves to get them?

We have no clue how bad this could turn out in a few more years.