The Ethics Behind Profit: A Purdue Pharma Case Study

Jarvie, William

The Ethics Behind Profit: A Purdue Pharma Case Study

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10456/59265

Author(s)

Jarvie, William

Date Issued

April 27, 2025

Abstract

This paper further examines the ethical responsibilities, regulatory failures, and economic factors that led to the rise of an opioid epidemic in the United States. This paper analyzes Purdue Pharma through a case study, exploring how unethical corporate practices, paired with failed oversight from government regulatory branches such as the FDA and DEA as well as socioeconomic decline creates a drug abuse epidemic that spans across the whole country. This paper argues that Purdue used misleading marketing strategies focused on increasing Oxycontin prescriptions, which led to widespread opioid addiction. The paper concludes that Purdue Pharma did act in an unethical manner and that this was the driving force behind the epidemic. Regulation failures and socioeconomic struggles (specifically in certain regions) played an important role in intensifying and prolonging the epidemic. The final findings from this paper can be used to influence policymakers and legislators to use what was learned from the opioid epidemic and prevent another health epidemic in the future.

Major

Economics

Honors

Business and Economics, 2025

First Reader(s)

Onyeiwu, Stephen Z.