REUTERS
Multiple pharmaceutical companies implicated in the opioid crisis made parody videos encouraging their sales staff to sell more pills, a Washington Post investigation found. In one 2008 video, company AlPharma parodied the TV show The Office to promote sales of the morphine pill Kadian. “I’ve gotta be a lean, meal selling machine to sell Kadian to all kinds of doctors,” said one character in the video. (AlPharma has since been acquired by Pfizer.) A Purdue Pharma video cited by The Guardian parodied the Taio Cruz song “Dynamite” to promote sales of the opioid Butran. In the internal video, sales staff sang, “Cause I sold you once, now I sold you twice.” A 2oo6 video by company Cephalon showed the fentanyl tablet Fentora appearing on a stage as the U2 song “Beautiful Day” played and fireworks burst in the background.