Notre Dame's William Evans co-authored the 2018 paper "How the Reformulation of Oxycontin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. He can speak to the current news re: the Purdue Pharma settlement.
From the 2018 Notre Dame press release:
Efforts by Purdue Pharma in 2010 to make its blockbuster prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin less prone to abuse did nothing to reduce the number of drug overdose deaths across the nation. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Notre Dame, the reformulation of OxyContin instead fueled a heroin epidemic that continues to claim lives at an increasing rate.
“Although the abuse-deterrent formulation for OxyContin reduced prescription opioid mortality,” Evans said, “the movement to heroin as a result of the reformulation meant there was a one-for-one substitution of heroin deaths for opioid deaths.”
For more from Evans on this topic, click here. His profile and contact info are here.
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