Boehringer Ingelheim and 8 Other Companies Caught Selling Illegal Painkillers

(MoneyWatch)  The FDA has banned Boehringer Ingelheim and eight other drug companies from selling illegal, unapproved pain drugs.

The drugs removed from the market include high concentrate morphine sulfate oral solutions, hydromorphone and oxycodone. The FDA:

"Consumers have a right to expect that their drugs meet the FDA's safety and effectiveness standards," said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).

"Doctors and patients are often unaware that not all drugs on the market are backed by FDA approval. It is a high priority for the FDA to remove these products from the market because they may be unsafe, ineffective, inappropriately labeled, or of poor quality."

Boehringer, through its Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane unit, was selling the delightfully named "Roxicodone" tablets. Roxicodone is yet another version of hillbilly heroin oxycodone, or OxyContin. The other companies cited were:

Cody Laboratories, Inc., Cody, Wyoming; Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., Mahwah, N.J.; Lannett Company, Inc., Philadelphia; Lehigh Valley Technologies, Inc., Allentown, Pa.; Mallinckrodt Inc. Pharmaceuticals Group, St. Louis; Physicians Total Care Inc., Tulsa, Okla.; Roxane Laboratories Inc., Columbus, Ohio; and Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals Inc., Newport, Ky.

BNET's take: It is a rare day when a major pharma company, such as Boehringer, makes a slipup like this. The last one we can remember was Bayer, which was caught marketing illegal aspirin back in 2008.