Anyone like me, who personally knows someone who has had their life destroyed because of Oxy probably had mixed feelings reading this today in the Times.

The company that makes the narcotic painkiller OxyContin and three current and former executives pleaded guilty today in federal court here to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused.
...according to federal officials, Purdue sales representatives falsely told doctors that the statement, rather than simply being a theory, meant that OxyContin had a lower potential for addiction or abuse than drugs like Percocet. Among other things, company sales officials were allowed to draw their own fake scientific charts, which they then distributed to doctors, to support that misleading abuse-related claim, federal officials said.

Unbelievable. How many people died while they were deciding whether to come clean about their "misbranding"? Obviously people are responsible for their own actions, and people with a propensity to drug addiction will find something regardless, but this drug was especially insidious. It provided pain relief to very ill people who thought they had no hope, but it also destroyed so many lives. A little pill that, when crushed, was as powerful as heroin. Maybe a simple warning wouldn't have prevented it all, but one can't help but think it might have made some difference in the attention doctors paid to prescribing it.

Does the company deserve some credit for coming clean, rather than dragging the trial out?

In Guilty Plea, OxyContin Maker to Pay $600 Million

OxyContin Producers admit to 'Misbranding'