Category Archives: Pharmaceuticals industry

Canada announces regulations to cut price of prescription drugs

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  • Move hailed as ‘crucial step to lower prescription drug costs’
  • New rules were resisted by pharmaceutical companies

The Canadian government has announced regulations to reduce patented drug prices it said would save Canadians C$13.2bn (US$10bn) over a decade, overriding heavy opposition from pharmaceutical companies.

The changes are the biggest reform to Canada’s drug price regime since 1987. They will save money for patients, employers and insurers including the government at the expense of drug company profits. They also could eventually cut the earnings of drugmakers in the United States, the world’s largest pharmaceutical market.

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Capitalism gone wrong: how big pharma created America’s opioid carnage

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A web of firms ramped up narcotic painkiller sales, creating the biggest drug epidemic in American history as profits surged

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter laid out his indictment against one of the biggest corporations in America, he made a point of saying that he was not hostile to big business.

“The fact that I am a Republican, a conservative and a believer in capitalism and the marketplace does not require me to turn a blind eye when corporations hurt people,” Hunter told a state court.

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Drug makers flooded US with billions of opioid pills as epidemic surged, data shows

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Statistics are a blow to country’s biggest pharmaceuticals that paid millions of dollars in out of court settlements

Drug makers and distributors flooded the US with more than 75bn opioid pills in the crucial years when the country’s epidemic of painkiller addiction and deaths surged to record levels, according to previously secret data released by an American court.

The publication of the Drug Enforcement Administration statistics is a blow to some of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms that have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in out of court settlements in part to keep sealed evidence that they profiteered from escalating demand for opioids even as public health officials were declaring an epidemic.

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‘There’s no opposition now’: how a quiet Canada town became a world leader in growing weed

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In an abandoned chocolate factory in Ontario, Canopy Growth is nurturing global ambitions. But could it thrive in Britain?

The musky aroma hits you from the car park at the headquarters of Canopy Growth, the world’s largest cannabis company.

Inside this nondescript warehouse – an abandoned Hershey’s chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, Canada – awaits the stuff of a stoner’s wildest dreams. Myriad rooms teem with row upon row of bushy marijuana plants at various stages of maturity, under intense lamplight, swaying in the breeze of dozens of fans.

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Vyleesi: latest attempt at ‘female Viagra’ approved by US regulators

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Pharmaceutical known chemically as bremelanotide is aimed at women with low sexual desire disorder or HSDD

Drug regulators in the United States have approved Vyleesi, the latest attempt to come up with a “female Viagra” for women with low sexual desire.

Vyleesi, chemically known as bremelanotide, is said to activate pathways in the brain involved in sexual desire, helping premenopausal women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). It has been developed by Palatin Technologies and licensed to Amag Pharmaceuticals, and is expected to be available from September through select pharmacies.

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Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock

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Armed with blockchain and AI, health workers and campaigners are battling the bogus business that kills thousands

By the time the teenage boy was standing in front of Bernice Bornmai, feverish and delirious, it was already too late.

It wasn’t just the malaria that was killing the 17-year-old, it was the time he’d wasted taking fake medicine. The antimalarials did nothing to stop the disease marching through the young Ghanaian’s body: his organs were already shutting down.

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Britain must do more to stop drug firms from lining their pockets | Stephen Doughty

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Overcharging for life-saving medicines costs lives, yet the UK seems reluctant to support efforts to encourage fairer pricing

In a year when the British government should be working to secure progress towards universal health coverage, they are failing to champion access to life-saving medicines globally.

The Italian government has put forward a draft resolution to improve the transparency of markets for drugs, vaccines and other health-related technologies, to be discussed at the World Health Assembly in 10 days’ time.

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Sackler family want to settle opioids lawsuits, lawyer says

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Owners of Purdue Pharma face more than 2,000 lawsuits by officials who blame prescription opioids for sparking drug crisis

The members of the multi-billionaire Sackler family who own a painkiller manufacturer and are being sued by hundreds of state and local officials as part of the opioids litigation want to settle, a leading lawyer for the family said this week.

The attorney Mary Jo White represents four members of the family that controls Purdue Pharma, the company that developed and marketed the painkiller OxyContin. Purdue, along with other opioid makers, wholesalers and distributors, is facing more than 2,000 lawsuits by state, city and county officials who blame prescription opiates for sparking an unprecedented epidemic of drug abuse.

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Purdue’s opioid settlement set to herald barrage of lawsuits against big pharma

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Oklahoma chooses to settle for $270m over Purdue’s criminal marketing of OxyContin – but more lawsuits are likely to come

Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, thought it best to take the money and run.

Just weeks from the start of a much-anticipated trial against the company at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, Hunter was unnerved when Purdue Pharma began making noises about declaring bankruptcy in the face of mounting lawsuits over its powerful narcotic prescription painkiller, OxyContin.

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Key EU medicines regulator closes London office with loss of 900 jobs

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European Medicines Agency heads for Amsterdam 63 days before Brexit

The European Medicines Agency, one of the biggest EU regulators and one of the first casualties of Brexit, has closed its doors in the UK for the last time with the loss of 900 jobs.

Staff lowered and folded up the 28 national flags that adorned the lobby in London’s Canary Wharf headquarters on Friday night and bid farewell before moving to their new offices in Amsterdam.

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Revealed: UK patients stockpile drugs in fear of no-deal Brexit

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Doctors call for more transparency amid fears of shortages, especially of insulin

Ministers have been urged by top doctors to reveal the extent of national drug stocks, amid growing evidence patients are stockpiling medication in preparation for a no-deal Brexit.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which represents tens of thousands of doctors, urged the government to be more “transparent about national stockpiles, particularly for things that are already in short supply or need refrigeration, such as insulin”.

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