The makers of Plavix, a blood-thinning medication, were recently ordered by a Hawaii judge to pay $834 million from illegally marketing and lacking the necessary health-risk warnings.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and three subsidiaries of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi are the producers of the drug. The companies that sold the drug between 1998 and 2010 lacked warning labels that confess the drug's ineffectiveness and that it could potentially be harmful to Asians and Pacific Islanders.
In that timeframe, there were 834,012 prescriptions sold and the court imposed a $1,000 fine on every prescription. Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Dean E. Ochiai concluded that it wasn't until 2010 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required a "black box" label that they made drugmakers change the labeling.
“Today’s order vindicates seven long years of work by this department and its attorneys to ensure that companies marketing and selling their products in Hawaii keep the safety and welfare of our people at the forefront of their business decisions,” Attorney General Clare Connors said, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat. “The order entered by the Court today puts the pharmaceutical industry on notice that it will be held accountable for conduct that deceives the public and places profit above safety.”
There have been other states filing lawsuits against the companies but Hawaii has hit the drug makers the hardest.
“Hawaii’s large claim appears to be, in part, based on our large Asian and Pacific Islander population — and clinical evidence that the drug is less effective for these populations,” Jenifer Sunrise Winter, a professor at the University of Hawaii who specializes in data governance of medical information, wrote in an email to Civil Beat.
The companies paid a $3 million settlement to West Virginia in 2019 after allegedly stating their effectiveness was better than aspirin.