Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, paid Canadian doctors nearly three-and-a-half times more money than it doled out to U.S. prescribers, according to a Star analysis of the drug maker’s physician payments adjusted for the countries’ populations.Purdue Canada gave just over $2 million to Canadian health-care professionals in 2016 for services such as consulting and delivering speeches on conditions and treatments.That same year, U.S.-based Purdue Pharma L.P. paid American physicians $5.53 million (Canadian), according to a U.S. government database showing the financial ties between Big Pharma and prescribers. (2016 is the only year payment data is publicly available for both countries.)That means for every 1,000 residents, Purdue spent $58 on Canadian doctors compared to $17 in the U.S.Another way to look at it: Purdue gave $24 for every Canadian physician, while its U.S. operations handed out a little under $6 for every American prescriber.The discrepancy between Purdue’s Canadian and U.S. physician payments has doctors and drug safety advocates raising an alarm that the drug maker may be focusing its marketing efforts on Canadian doctors.“That Purdue spent more than four times as much per Canadian physician should shatter the myth that we are not exposed to the same level of aggressive marketing tactics as in the U.S.,” said Trudo Lemmens, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Toronto.Purdue did not challenge the results of the Star’s analysis and did not answer why the per capita payments to physicians are higher in Canada.In a statement, a spokesperson said that while Purdue’s Canadian and U.S. operations are “both part of an independently associated network of companies, the companies are operated independently.”The company did not provide details on what the payments were specifically for but said it funds educational programs for Canadian doctors on topics such as responsible opioid ...
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