When Maura makes a promise, she keeps her word. Today, she took another step forward to hold those who helped create the deadly opioid epidemic accountable.

 

Watch and share Maura’s press conference announcing her lawsuit against Publicis Health.

 

 

Maura filed a lawsuit against Publicis Health, a multinational marketing firm, for the role it played in helping Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers sell more OxyContin and amass more wealth. Even as the dangers of opioids were well known, Publicis created marketing campaigns with the goal of pushing doctors to prescribe more opioids to more patients for longer periods of time at higher doses. They developed messaging for prescribers – including thousands right here in Massachusetts – designed to convince doctors to prescribe OxyContin to more patients and at higher levels, and they even devised a plan to subvert the CDC’s guidelines intended to limit prescribing levels.

 

Despite knowing their conduct was wrong, Publicis kept cashing Purdue’s checks. Publicis worked with Purdue between 2010-2019 and made more than $50 million. Meanwhile, since 2010, more than 15,000 of our family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues in Massachusetts lost their lives to opioid-related overdoses.

 

Maura is going to hold accountable those responsible for this crisis – whether that’s Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers, the consulting firm McKinsey, or Publicis. It doesn’t matter how wealthy or how powerful they might be. Putting a stop to this unlawful behavior and making those responsible pay for the harm they caused is a matter of life and death.

 

Publicis once bragged that they managed Purdue’s business like it was their own. Now, Maura is holding them accountable for this crisis like it’s their own – because it is.

 

Take care,

Team Healey