Late last month, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen subsidiary agreed to pay $181 million to resolve claims by 36 states and the District of Columbia for promoting the Risperdal and Invega antipsychotic drugs for unapproved uses (see here). The settlement comes shortly before the health care giant is expected to pay as much as $2.2 billion over similar allegations by the Feds involving these and other drugs. But the deal with the states includes provisions that are more specific than the sort of restrictions that the Feds often impose on drug makers, such as agreeing not to misuse continuing medical education programs for marketing or awarding grants to doctors based on their prescribing habits. One provision in particular, however, restricts the ability of drug makers to use sales and marketing personnel to distribute peer reviewed reprints of journal articles that contain off-label information, which is a significant development.
