OxyContin Makers Admit Deception

Legal experts said proving that drug company officials intended to deceive consumers is a difficult burden for the government. But one health-care advocate criticized the settlement as toothless, given the estimated $9.6 billion in OxyContin sales between 2000 and last year.

Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said in a written statement that the government should have pressed Purdue to forfeit more money it made off the drug.

"Why have the three wealthy Purdue executives, who have pleaded guilty to orchestrating this dangerous promotional campaign, escaped jail time and why are they paying merely $34.5 million in penalties?" Wolfe said.

Since 2002, Purdue has been a client of Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm headed by former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani. Giuliani, who was one of Purdue's lawyers in the case through his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, met with government lawyers more than half a dozen times and helped strike an agreement in principle to settle the case in October, people involved in the case said.

The crackdown on abuse of OxyContin was on display earlier this year at the courthouse in Alexandria, where prominent pain doctor William E. Hurwitz was convicted on drug-trafficking charges.

Hurwitz, a major figure in the growing field of pain management who was once profiled on "60 Minutes,'' was convicted on 16 counts of drug trafficking. Prosecutors contended that Hurwitz prescribed excessive amounts of oxycodone and other dangerous narcotics -- in one instance more than 1,600 pills a day -- to addicts and others, some of whom then sold the medication on a lucrative black market.

That case is part of an ongoing investigation into doctors, pharmacists and patients suspected of selling potent narcotics and fueling an epidemic that ravaged Appalachia and triggered other crimes.

Staff writer Jerry Markon contributed to this report