Should advising clients on how to find clients for a legal asset be a crime?

The Wall Street Journal reported in April that the Justice Department would conduct a “criminal investigation into consulting firm McKinsey in connection with its past role in advising some of the nation’s largest opioid manufacturers on how to boost sales.”

According to the WSJ report, McKinsey consultants advised the company [Purdue] on how to increase sales of its flagship drug, including suggesting that Purdue’s sales team make more calls to healthcare providers it knew were writing large volumes of OxyContin prescriptions and spend less time with doctors who were the least likely to prescribe the opioid medication, the data showed. Oxy

Imagine that. McKinsey allegedly tried to help Purdue tailor its sales efforts to doctors who wanted it already prescription oral opioid medications. There’s nothing mysterious or nefarious about it. It is standard and economically rational. To do otherwise would be inefficient and wasteful. Some consultants do this kind of work almost every day. The small consulting firm Objective Insights, Inc. (co-owned by one of the authors) has run it a handful of times.

This is from David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper, “Is Promotion to customers is a crime?” American Institute for Economic Research, June 18, 2024.

Read the whole thingwhich isn’t long.