In making the major decision to seek professional help, people battling addiction – and their families, friends, and colleagues – are looking for accurate information about the treatment best suited to the individual. But according to a proposed FTC settlement, R360 LLC, a company that provided marketing services to addiction treatment centers, and its principal, Steven Doumar, ran national ads that used false claims to promote their clients’ facilities. It’s the first case the FTC has brought under the Opioid Addiction Recovery Fraud Prevention Act.
In addition to advertising on its own website and through social media, Florida-based R360 ran an extensive national TV campaign for the R360 Network, which it claimed was a nationwide group of addiction recovery specialists. The ads didn’t mention a particular facility by name. Instead, according to the FTC, R360 promised that people who called their toll-free number would be connected to an addiction treatment specialist who would make a personalized assessment to refer the caller to the best treatment center for that person. But how could a person looking for help possibly evaluate the quality of a particular treatment center? Not to worry, R360 claimed. According to their ads, an expert in substance abuse and addiction treatment selected each member of the R360 Network. What’s more, each R360 Network member was evaluated against tough objective standards.
R360’s ads emphasized the rigorous vetting process that treatment...
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