Drug giant pleads guilty, fined $3B for drug marketing

[Dant]

WASHINGTON--Prescription drug giant GlaxoSmithKline will plead guilty and pay $3 billion to resolve federal criminal and civil inquiries arising from the company's illegal promotion of some of its products, its failure to report safety data and alleged false price reporting, the Justice Department announced Monday.

The company agreed to plead guilty to three criminal counts, including two counts of introducing misbranded drugs — Paxil and Wellbutrin — and one count of failing to report safety data about the drug Avandia to the Food and Drug Administration...

"GSK's sales force bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high priced entertainment, from Hawaiian vacations to paying doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours to a European pheasant hunt to tickets to Madonna concerts, and this is just to name a few," said Carmin M. Ortiz, U.S. attorney in Massachusetts.


Drug giant pleads guilty, fined $3B for drug marketing

 

[TennDave]

Hooray!! I love it when a BP company gets a black eyed.
Maybe some day they will have to pay restitution to vapers...but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[durgidog]

It's about time.

 

[Vocalek]

For those who don't know, the smoking-cessation drug Zyban was merely a rebranding of Wellbutrin, approved for treatment of depression.

The corporation also promoted the drug Wellbutrin from January 1999 to December 2003 for weight loss, the treatment of sexual dysfunction, substance addictions and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, although it was only approved for treatment of major depressive disorder.

Drug giant pleads guilty, fined $3B for drug marketing

At least there was research conducted to show that the active ingredient, bupropion, is helpful for some smokers in reducing cravings. It reduced cravings for me, but not enough to totally stop smoking. I did cut my CPD in half, so that's something.

 

[Dant]

And now the important work behind closed doors begins at the pharmaceutical companies...how to not get caught next time.