Curtis Wright IV

Curtis Wright IV (born in 1949) is an American former government official known for his role in the Food and Drug Administration's approval of OxyContin for Purdue Pharma in 1995, followed by his subsequent employment by the company, which led to portrayals in films and reports in nonfiction books, magazines, and news media outlets of his alleged role as one of the key figures in the current opioid epidemic in the United States.

Wright was born in 1949.

His father was an Ivy League-educated university law professor, and his mother was a psychiatrist and the superintendent of a state mental hospital.

Wright received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Haverford College.

Wright's first government job after receiving his bachelor's degree at Haverford in the 1970s was as a research chemist for the National Institute of Mental Health, a U.S. governmental agency responsible for biomedical and health-related research.

He finished a four-year program of medicine in 1977 at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences prior to joining the United States Navy as a lieutenant.

Wright completed his surgical internship at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1978, where he received training in undersea medicine and substance abuse treatment.

By 1983, Wright had attained the rank of lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.

He received a master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1986, where he also completed his residency the following year.

This followed with a residency in occupational and general preventative medicine and a fellowship in behavioral pharmacology and drug dependence.

Wright's training program in behavioral pharmacology was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

He completed his postgraduate in behavioral pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1989.

After leaving the United States Navy, Wright joined the Food and Drug Administration in December 1989 and by late 1996 had attained his highest position as acting director of its Division of Anesthetic, Critical Care, and Addiction of Drug Products.

This FDA department was responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of prescription pharmaceutical drugs.

Under Wright's tenure, Purdue Pharma's application to sell the opioid OxyContin was approved and included specific wording in the prescription information that allowed the company broader scope in marketing the opioid as less addictive, and therefore suitable for a wider range of patient pain than any previously FDA-approved opioids of similar strength.

Wright continued in academia from 1993 to 2000 as an assistant professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and from 2006 as an adjunct clinical instructor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Wright left the FDA in October 1997.

Wright's first private sector job after leaving the FDA was with Adolor Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that was eventually acquired by Pfizer.

In December 1998, he was hired by Purdue Pharma and eventually attained the position of executive director for Risk Assessment and Health Policy.

On December 3, 2002, U.S. Attorney John L. Brownlee, who headed the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, subpoenaed Purdue Pharma for their corporate records relating to OxyContin, consisting of millions of pages.

Parts of Wright's sworn depositions in 2003 and 2018 have internal contradictions and differ from documentary evidence described the 2003–2006 U.S. Federal Government investigation into Purdue Pharma.

On July 25, 2003, Wright made a sworn deposition under oath for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Mississippi in the case of Terri Lynn Poston v. Purdue Pharma.

At the time, Wright was an employee of Purdue Pharma.

The deposition was conducted by the plaintiff's attorney, Robert J. McNamara.

Purdue attorneys Donald I. Strauber and Jay R. Henneberry were present representing Wright and had coached him prior to the deposition.

Richard Silbert from Purdue Pharma and Michael Shane from the FDA were also present.

After leaving Purdue, Wright joined Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc. in September 2005 as vice president of risk management and regulatory affairs.

Wright was implicated in a criminal conspiracy outlined in a 2006 United States Department of Justice review document that was first made public in Purdue Pharma's 2019 bankruptcy proceedings.

With the help of Brownlee's assistants Randy Ramsmeyer and Rick Mountcastle, the evidence, gathered into a 120-page prosecution memo from September 28, 2006, entitled Memorandum for the United States Attorney, was sent to the Department of Justice in Washington DC, where it was reviewed by U.S. Justice Fraud Division attorney Rick Ogrosky.

After indicting Purdue Pharma and its executives Michael Friedman, Howard R. Udell, and Paul D. Goldenheim on felony charges of criminal misbranding in 2006, a plea deal was arranged by Purdue's attorneys, former U.S. Attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Mary Jo White in 2007 to instead charge Purdue Frederick, a minor subsidiary of the company, with a felony and reduce the charges against the three Purdue Pharma executives to misdemeanors.

Since the case was concluded in a plea agreement and never went to trial, Brownlee's 2006 memorandum detailing the evidence for these charges was not released to the public and remains confidential.

Rick Ogrosky's 2006 internal Department of Justice Fraud Division review of Brownlee's 2006 memo, however, was released to the public as part of Purdue Pharma's 2019 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of New York and shows that the 2006 memo has numerous references to Wright.

Ogrosky concludes that Wright colluded with Purdue to get approval for OxyContin with purposefully false label statements.

Although that case was settled in a 2007 plea agreement deal, members of United States Congress have requested the full 2006 documentation from the Department of Justice with the goal of opening a new case based upon the evidence then gathered.

The plea deal was confirmed and ordered on July 23, 2007, by Chief U.S. District Judge James Parker Jones, and Purdue Frederick was sentenced to pay a fine of $600 million.

The executives were given fines and made to perform community service in drug treatment programs.

Purdue Pharma and its three executives were originally to be charged with the felony crimes of criminal conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, interstate distribution of a misbranded drug, and two counts of money laundering.

According to documents of the Securities and Exchange Commission, from 2008 Wright was an executive officer and shareholder in a company called Star Scientific Inc. After the company founder's involvement in a 2014 gifts corruption scandal that resulted in the conviction (later overturned) of Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, the company changed its name to Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, filing bankruptcy two years later.

One month after the federal indictment of McDonnell, Wright formed a pharmaceutical consulting company under his own name in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The company was dissolved in 2018, either under a court order or by order of the secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.