Preview Newsletter
General Opioid Coverage July 8-July 10
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Albany county to join national lawsuit (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | WRGB Albany
By WRGB Staff
Albany county is joining a national lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies aimed at holding them accountable for their role in creating the opioid epidemic. -
Why the Albany County Executive believes his opioid lawsuit could actually win (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | WRGB Albany
By Anne McCloy
It's already been done before. County Executive Dan McCoy knows that, but he believes his lawsuit will actually win. -
Governments are suing drug companies over opiates and Genesee County may follow suit
Jul 7, 2017 | The Batavian
By Maria Pericozzi
There have been multiple lawsuits filed by state and local governments around the nation against major drug manufacturers over their marketing and distribution of opioids, and Genesee County officials are thinking about becoming one of the plaintiffs. -
Ohio
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Mary Taylor calls opioid epidemic 'personal' as she announces run for Governor (VIDEO)
Jul 8, 2017 | WFMJ (OH)
By Mike Gauntner
Framing herself as a long-time supporter of conservative issues, and reacting personally to the rising opioid epidemic, Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor announced she is seeking the Republican nomination for Governor. -
In Ohio, A State Shaped By Opioid Addiction
Jul 10, 2017 | The Fix
By The Fix Staff
"I think our general public understanding of this addiction crisis that exists in Ohio today is a lot different than it was five years ago, four years ago." -
Cherokee Nation sues drug distributors as opioids ravage Indian country in Oklahoma
Jul 9, 2017 | The Oklahoman
Years after a confronting a methamphetamine epidemic, Oklahoma tribes face a new menace in opioids. The Cherokee Nation is fighting back with an unprecedented lawsuit. -
US opioid addiction: Pharmaceutical companies sued (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | Al Jazeera
By Kristen Saloomey
Addiction and deaths as a result of opioid drug overdoses is skyrocketing in the United States. -
Drugmakers knew tamper-resistant painkillers could be abused, lawsuit claims
Jul 7, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
A new court filing accuses drug manufacturers of promoting painkillers they said were resistant to tampering by drug abusers even though the companies knew that those protections did not work. -
Drugmakers knew tamper-resistant painkillers could be abused, lawsuit claims
Jul 7, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
A new court filing accuses drug manufacturers of promoting painkillers they said were resistant to tampering by drug abusers even though the companies knew that those protections did not work. -
Urban-rural divide exacerbates opioid crisis, despite prescription drop
Jul 9, 2017 | The Hill
By Reid Wilson
The number of opioid prescriptions written in the United States has declined in recent years, according to newly released federal data, but the number of people who have fallen victim to fatal overdoses from prescription painkillers or heroin continues to rise. -
(OPINION) Time to declare war on Big Pharma
Jul 10, 2017 | Newsday
By Christopher Dale
In May, Ohio became the latest and largest government entity to sue major pharmaceutical manufacturers for their role in propagating an opioid addiction crisis.
New York
Illinois
Cherokee Nation (OK)
General Coverage
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Albany county to join national lawsuit (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | WRGB Albany
By WRGB Staff
Albany county executive Dan McCoy says he's seen how opioids have affected the county and he hopes the pharmaceutical industry will be held accountable for it.
County executives from across the country have tasked national law firm motley rice with leading the suit, the same firm that took charge of suits against tobacco companies.
Link to Video Here: http://cbs6albany.com/news/local/albany-county-to-join-national-lawsuit
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Why the Albany County Executive believes his opioid lawsuit could actually win (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | WRGB Albany
By Anne McCloy
It's already been done before. County Executive Dan McCoy knows that, but he believes his lawsuit will actually win.
“Now you're fighting Goliath with Goliath,” McCoy said.
The Goliath in this situation, attorneys Motley Rice, known for their work in the fight against big tobacco companies.
On his recent trip to Washington D.C, McCoy says county executives from across the country formed an opioid task force and met with the mega law firm to work on their case against major drug manufacturers.
McCoy says the suit accuses the companies of causing the opioid epidemic, and will demand counties be paid back for the huge costs associated with the crisis.
“If you're looking at the cost, that’s costing counties in insurances, something has to be done,” McCoy said.
Schenectady County filed a suit like this last month, what makes this different, McCoy says this law firm has delivered on major cases like this before.
“They took on BP Oil and they won, they went against Volkswagen and they won,” McCoy said.
Another difference, McCoy says 25 counties from across the country will all be signing on, providing budget information to be included in the suit.
McCoy says the opioid crisis has cost Albany County at least $5 million a year since 2012.
He hopes to get paid back, and to bring real change.
“We do have a leg to stand on,” McCoy said.
McCoy says Motley Rice has agreed to work for the counties that want to sign on at no cost to taxpayers, and says the suit will be filed this fall.
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Governments are suing drug companies over opiates and Genesee County may follow suit
Jul 7, 2017 | The Batavian
By Maria Pericozzi
There have been multiple lawsuits filed by state and local governments around the nation against major drug manufacturers over their marketing and distribution of opioids, and Genesee County officials are thinking about becoming one of the plaintiffs.
Several counties in New York are part of the effort to pin at least some of the financial burden for the opiate epidemic on pharmaceutical companies.
County Attorney Kevin Earl is researching the feasibility of the county filing suit, either individually as a member of a multi-plaintiff action, against major drug manufacturers to recover current and future damages to the county taxpayers from abuse of opioid pharmaceuticals.
“If you want, [I can] investigate whether it would be better for us to join an existing lawsuit or (file) on our own,” Earl said at the Ways and Means Committee meeting on Wednesday.
Finding out the costs and expenses needed is something Earl will be researching as well.
Earl said most counties are doing research, then bringing a recommendation back to the legislative body.
Committee Member Raymond Cianfrini said every state is beginning to go after pharmaceutical companies in that regard.
“I don’t see a problem with us piggybacking on somebody else in a class-action lawsuit,” Cianfrini said. “But, we need to know who is going to do it, what it’s going to cost us, [and] what are the time frames.”
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Mary Taylor calls opioid epidemic 'personal' as she announces run for Governor (VIDEO)
Jul 8, 2017 | WFMJ (OH)
By Mike Gauntner
Framing herself as a long-time supporter of conservative issues, and reacting personally to the rising opioid epidemic, Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor announced she is seeking the Republican nomination for Governor.
In her speech delivered before the City Club of Cleveland on Friday, Taylor said that confronting the epidemic is personal for her because it has touched her family.
In June, Taylor told the Dayton Daily News that her two sons have struggled with opioid addiction for five years, which has included failed drug rehab programs and overdoses.
“I have known the sorrow that drug addiction causes,” said Taylor “I’m angry – angry at what drug addiction does, the dreams it destroys, and the lives it takes. I’m determined – determined to fight for the lives of Ohioans from every region, race and economic circumstance who find themselves ensnared in this addiction”
Taylor called on the federal government to step in and stop cultivation and production in Asian poppy fields, target cartels and secure the border with Mexico.
Possibly taking aim at fellow Republican gubernatorial candidate and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, Taylor said, “Hiring a personal injury attorney and filing a lawsuit against a drug company will not solve the problem.
DeWine announced in May that the state has filed suit against some drug makers, accusing them of helping to heighten the opioid epidemic.
The New York Times reported that the law firm of Labaton Sucharow has been advising states on possible opioid litigation.
The Lt. Governor is calling for what she characterized as a comprehensive, fully-integrated drug control strategy that makes use of law enforcement, treatment, education, faith initiatives, public service campaigns, and border interdiction.
Taylor began her announcement by asserting that the state is shedding its Rust Belt image, saying that Ohio has dug itself out a hole during the administration of fellow Republican Governor John Kasich.
But Taylor said more needs to be done with reforming business regulations, making the tax system less complicated, helping Ohioans find work and making sure businesses have the trained workers they need.
Taylor called on her experience as a Certified Public Accountant, Ohio Insurance Director, State Representative, and Lt. Governor as qualifications to become Governor.
Saying that conservatives believe in what she called the inherent dignity of work, Taylor promised to focus on small businesses in the state.
She criticized what she said was the acceptance of multi-generational poverty.
“There is a place for safety net programs to keep a family’s house warm in the winter and food in the fridge during lean times. But government is not a long-term solution to any problem,” said Taylor, adding that creating more jobs is the answer.
Calling America's regulatory system out of control, Taylor said that reform is needed to restore jobs.
In 2011, Gov. Kasich appointed Taylor to head-up Ohio’s Common Sense Initiative, an effort to find out from businesses which regulations are hampering their growth.
Taylor promised to build on reforms started by the Common Sense Initiative.
The candidate isn't giving up on Ohio's charter schools, many of which have come under criticism for failing to deliver on promises to offer a viable alternative to the public school system.
“We will reset our charter school system as accountable centers of innovation that provide true choice and true benefit to Ohio families not satisfied with their existing options,” said Taylor. “We will ensure Ohioans develop skills which lead to jobs which lead to family security and prosperity.”
Taylor concluded by saying she has stuck with sometimes unpopular conservative principles.
In a nearly Trump-like assertion, Taylor said she is the one candidate who will challenge the system.
In addition to DeWine, Taylor joins Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Congressman Jim Renacci on the list of those seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
Five Democrats have declared their intention to become governor, including Valley favorite son, Ohio Senator Joe Schiavoni.
A transcript of Lt. Governor Taylor's announcement may be read here:
http://www.wfmj.com/story/35833183/mary-taylor-calls-opioid-epidemic-personal-as-she-announces-run-for-governor
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In Ohio, A State Shaped By Opioid Addiction
Jul 10, 2017 | The Fix
By The Fix Staff
On three separate occasions in 2016 the medical examiner in Summit County, Ohio had to order refrigerated trailers because the morgue had run out of space for all the bodies of opioid overdose victims. This is just one example of the ways that opioid addiction has gripped Ohio, giving the state one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the nation.
In 2016, opioid overdoses killed 4,149 Ohioans, according to the Columbus Dispatch. That is an average rate of 11 people a day, underscoring the need for opioid treatment in Ohio.
William Denihan, of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County, Ohio said the opioid epidemic in the state is “so out of control. I call it a tsunami.”
Despite growing awareness of the epidemic, the overdose dates in 2017 are continuing to increase.
“We’ve done so much, but the numbers are going the other way,” Denihan said. “I don’t see the improvement.”
The extent of the epidemic promoted Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to announce that the state is suing five opioid manufacturers, accusing them of “overstating [opioids’] benefits and trivializing their potential addictive qualities.”
“We believe the evidence will show that these companies got thousands and thousands of Ohioans—our friends, our family members, our co-workers, our kids—addicted to opioid pain medications, which has all too often led to use of the cheaper alternatives of heroin and synthetic opioids,” DeWine said.
In 2016, nearly one in five Ohio residents, a total of 2.3 million people, were prescribed opioids.
Soon after the announcement of the state’s lawsuit the cities of Dayton and Lorain announced additional lawsuits, saying that the state’s suit did not go far enough.
“The big drug companies have stuck profits in their wallets, and they have passed the bill on to us,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said. “This crisis has gone on for far too long. We’ve gotten too little help from the state. Even the state’s lawsuit does not go far enough to hold responsible all the bad actors that created this epidemic.”
The epidemic has touched people of all socio-economic and social statuses in the state. Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor recently revealed that her two sons have battled opioid addiction for years. Now 26 and 23, the young men are stable, if not fully in recovery, Taylor said.
“When you’re in a crisis mode, every day is ‘just get by, get through.’ And we are not there today,” Taylor said. “We are not out of the woods, but we’re not in a crisis mode.”
Taylor emphasized that treatment has helped her sons survive.
“I know people who have lost their kids,” she said. “I’ve been to a funeral of somebody, a young person, who died of a heroin overdose. It’s not pretty. Until we found the treatment that worked for (our sons), the voice of worry was very loud and it was very scary. Very scary.”
Taylor said that while she initially hid her family’s struggles, she decided that it was time to share their story.
“It may have been the stigma. I think our general public understanding of this addiction crisis that exists in Ohio today is a lot different than it was five years ago, four years ago,” she said.
Taylor and her sons opted to open up in order to raise awareness and provide hope to others struggling with addiction.
“There can be a light at the end of the tunnel where you may today feel like you can’t see the light,” Taylor said.
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Cherokee Nation sues drug distributors as opioids ravage Indian country in Oklahoma
Jul 9, 2017 | The Oklahoman
Years after a confronting a methamphetamine epidemic, Oklahoma tribes face a new menace in opioids. The Cherokee Nation is fighting back with an unprecedented lawsuit.
[The remainder of this article is paywalled. Link here: https://www.oklahoman.com/login?referer=/article/5555500?embargo_redirect=yes
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US opioid addiction: Pharmaceutical companies sued (VIDEO)
Jul 10, 2017 | Al Jazeera
By Kristen Saloomey
Addiction and deaths as a result of opioid drug overdoses is skyrocketing in the United States.
So much so, a growing number of local governments are suing pharmaceutical companies.
They accuse drug makers of downplaying the risks of their products.
Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey reports from Long Island in New York.
Video Link: http://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/07/opioid-addiction-pharmaceutical-companies-sued-170710113058151.html
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Drugmakers knew tamper-resistant painkillers could be abused, lawsuit claims
Jul 7, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
A new court filing accuses drug manufacturers of promoting painkillers they said were resistant to tampering by drug abusers even though the companies knew that those protections did not work.
The claims were filed Thursday, the same day that drug manufacturer Endo Pharmaceuticals agreed to withdraw its opioid painkiller Opana ER from the market in a dispute over its “abuse deterrent” formulation.
The Food and Drug Administration last month asked Endo to remove the medication from the market, the first time the agency had done so because of the public health consequences of abuse.
The company reformulated the extended-release drug in 2012 to make it more difficult for abusers to crush and snort. But the FDA said the reformulation led to more people injecting the drug and sparked a major 2015 outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C in a small Indiana county among users who shared needles.
The Dublin-based company said in a statement on its website that it “continues to believe in the safety, efficacy, and favorable benefit-risk profile” of the drug but would comply with the FDA’s request. The move will cost Endo $20 million, the company said.
Sales of the drug totaled $159 million last year, Endo said.
The new legal claims against Endo and another drug company, Purdue Pharma, were added to lawsuits first filed in 2014 by two counties in California. The lawsuits were some of the first in a growing wave of legal actions against drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The lawsuits, filed by states, counties and cities across the country, seek to make the drug industry pay for the costs of addressing the opioid epidemic.
Nearly 180,000 people died of overdoses of prescription narcotics between 2000 and 2015, and thousands more have succumbed to heroin and fentanyl as the crisis has evolved.
In the latest claim, Santa Clara and Orange counties contend that companies “created false impressions,” especially among doctors, that the reformulated pills could “curb addiction and abuse.” Abuse deterrent pills are engineered to be difficult to crush or to turn to gelatin when users heat them to create an injectable liquid.
In the case of Endo, the lawsuit claims, the company had studies, “which it failed to disclose,” that showed the drug “could still be ground and chewed.” And users quickly learned that they could turn the drug into a liquid and inject it.
In an interview, Danny Chou, assistant county counsel in Santa Clara, said that Endo was attempting to take advantage of the drug crisis.
“This strategy is trying to take the opioid epidemic and benefit from it,” Chou said, by convincing prescribers that the abuse deterrent formulations were safer.
A spokeswoman for Endo could not immediately be reached for comment.
In the case of Purdue, the lawsuits contend that the company has used abuse deterrence as a selling point in California for the drugs OxyContin and Hysingla since 2013, even though information is easily found on websites and message boards about how to defeat the protections.
A spokesman for Purdue Pharma replied in an email that OxyContin in 2013 met the FDA’s standards for abuse-deterrent labeling, and the agency has not found a move toward injection among oxycodone users when it was reformulated.
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Drugmakers knew tamper-resistant painkillers could be abused, lawsuit claims
Jul 7, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
A new court filing accuses drug manufacturers of promoting painkillers they said were resistant to tampering by drug abusers even though the companies knew that those protections did not work.
The claims were filed Thursday, the same day that drug manufacturer Endo Pharmaceuticals agreed to withdraw its opioid painkiller Opana ER from the market in a dispute over its “abuse deterrent” formulation.
The Food and Drug Administration last month asked Endo to remove the medication from the market, the first time the agency had done so because of the public health consequences of abuse.
The company reformulated the extended-release drug in 2012 to make it more difficult for abusers to crush and snort. But the FDA said the reformulation led to more people injecting the drug and sparked a major 2015 outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C in a small Indiana county among users who shared needles.
The Dublin-based company said in a statement on its website that it “continues to believe in the safety, efficacy, and favorable benefit-risk profile” of the drug but would comply with the FDA’s request. The move will cost Endo $20 million, the company said.
Sales of the drug totaled $159 million last year, Endo said.
The new legal claims against Endo and another drug company, Purdue Pharma, were added to lawsuits first filed in 2014 by two counties in California. The lawsuits were some of the first in a growing wave of legal actions against drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The lawsuits, filed by states, counties and cities across the country, seek to make the drug industry pay for the costs of addressing the opioid epidemic.
Nearly 180,000 people died of overdoses of prescription narcotics between 2000 and 2015, and thousands more have succumbed to heroin and fentanyl as the crisis has evolved.
In the latest claim, Santa Clara and Orange counties contend that companies “created false impressions,” especially among doctors, that the reformulated pills could “curb addiction and abuse.” Abuse deterrent pills are engineered to be difficult to crush or to turn to gelatin when users heat them to create an injectable liquid.
In the case of Endo, the lawsuit claims, the company had studies, “which it failed to disclose,” that showed the drug “could still be ground and chewed.” And users quickly learned that they could turn the drug into a liquid and inject it.
In an interview, Danny Chou, assistant county counsel in Santa Clara, said that Endo was attempting to take advantage of the drug crisis.
“This strategy is trying to take the opioid epidemic and benefit from it,” Chou said, by convincing prescribers that the abuse deterrent formulations were safer.
A spokeswoman for Endo could not immediately be reached for comment.
In the case of Purdue, the lawsuits contend that the company has used abuse deterrence as a selling point in California for the drugs OxyContin and Hysingla since 2013, even though information is easily found on websites and message boards about how to defeat the protections.
A spokesman for Purdue Pharma replied in an email that OxyContin in 2013 met the FDA’s standards for abuse-deterrent labeling, and the agency has not found a move toward injection among oxycodone users when it was reformulated.
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Urban-rural divide exacerbates opioid crisis, despite prescription drop
Jul 9, 2017 | The Hill
By Reid Wilson
The number of opioid prescriptions written in the United States has declined in recent years, according to newly released federal data, but the number of people who have fallen victim to fatal overdoses from prescription painkillers or heroin continues to rise.
The problem is especially acute in small town and rural America, where the unemployment rate remains high and a disproportionate number of residents are on Medicare or Medicaid, according to the data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rapid growth in opioid prescriptions in the last two decades has coincided with and contributed to a spike in the number of drug overdoses in the United States. And even as prescriptions have slumped, more people are dying: More than 52,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2015, the last full year for which data is available.
Early estimates suggest the number of overdose deaths was far higher in 2016, and growing still in the early months of 2017.
Nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths in 2015 involved an opioid, the CDC reported. The agency said about two million Americans are addicted to opioids
“It’s important to understand what’s driving this, and there are two drivers, and they’re distinct. One of them is an increase in prescriptions, and that’s the main driver,” Tom Frieden, the former head of CDC, told The Hill in an interview.
Second, he said: “We’re seeing a huge spike in the availability and a reduction in cost of heroin and fentanyl. With addictive substances, if you increase availability and reduce cost, more people use them. It’s kind of a law of nature.”
“If law enforcement is able to make heroin and fentanyl more expensive and harder to get, fewer people will use it,” Frieden said.
Opioid prescriptions peaked in 2010, at about 81.2 prescriptions per 100 Americans. But while overall prescriptions have fallen, the numbers of prescriptions in about half of American counties remained steady or increased.
The number of prescriptions for thirty or more days jumped almost 59 percent between 2006 and 2012. The total amount prescribed, measured in morphine milligram equivalents, is three times as high today as the level in 1999.
The amount of opioids prescribed in America is nearly four times higher than that of Europe.
“The epidemic of opioid misuse, overdose, and death is a multifaceted crisis that requires partnership across sectors to respond with effective health care and public safety strategies,” the authors wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Reducing overprescribing practices prevents people from becoming addicted in the first place, potentially changing the demand for opioids.”
Today, the average opioid prescription covers 17.7 days, a third more than the rate in 2006. The length of a prescription matters, CDC experts say, because the risk of addiction rises the longer one takes the drugs.
The CDC data shows the counties where opioids are prescribed most often are those still suffering the effects of the great recession. The highest-prescribing counties are likely to be in rural areas or “micropolitan” towns with fewer than 50,000 residents, where the unemployment rate stands nearly two percentage points higher than the national average.
Those counties hit hardest by the epidemic are more likely to be dominated by white Americans: The average county in the highest quartile of opioid prescriptions is 83.6 percent white, while the lowest quartile is just 76.9 percent white.
And the chasm between those quartiles is immense: Doctors and dentists in the worst-hit counties wrote six times more prescriptions for opioids than did providers in the lowest-prescribing counties.
Counties where people are most likely to be prescribed opioids are in places like rural Appalachia, in states like Tennessee, West Virginia and Alabama. Rural communities in northern California and southern and eastern Oregon also see high rates of prescriptions.
A small handful of more urban cores, including the Las Vegas area, also have high rates of prescription.
Frieden, who ran the CDC for eight years under President Obama, said addressing the burgeoning crisis will require better and more accessible treatment, as well as narcan, a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose. But that only addresses those who are currently addicted to or at risk of addiction to opioids.
“The bigger picture is the other 300 million-plus people who don’t have an opioid dependency but might be prescribed [an opioid] tomorrow,” Frieden said. “To reduce supply, you have to improve prescribing and improve law enforcement. To reduce demand, you have to improve the management of addiction and increase community awareness and support.”
Many of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis have taken steps to limit the number of prescriptions being written.
States like Ohio and Kentucky have implemented new restrictions on prescriptions, as well as new statewide drug monitoring systems. In the vast majority of both states, opioid prescriptions have fallen between 2010 and 2015, according to the authors of the CDC study.
But even with the successes in some states, the number of deaths has grown. Preliminary tallies in Ohio compiled by The Columbus Dispatch show a 36 percent increase in the number of overdose deaths between 2015 and 2016. Many counties told the paper their overdose deaths were mounting at a faster clip in 2017.
The CDC scientists said the increased death rates could be attributed to the growing use of illegal opioids and their substitutes, like heroin and fentanyl. The experts found a link between illicit opioids and those who had filled a prescription within the last few months.
State lawmakers have considered more than 1,000 measures in recent years to confront the opioid epidemic, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Thirteen states have passed new laws to limit the length of opioid prescriptions or the number of pills prescribed over the last two years.
Forty nine states have implemented a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, statewide databases that allow doctors to see whether a patient has already been prescribed an opioid. A bill to create a similar program in Missouri stalled earlier this year.
In recent months, attorneys general from Ohio, Missouri and Oklahoma have filed lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that manufacture opioids over marketing practices the states say contribute to the number of prescriptions. About half of state attorneys general are investigating the industry, as are two committees in Congress.
Frieden said the report shows progress is happening, but that a solution will be a long time in the making.
“Turning off the tap of excess opiates from prescriptions and from the drug cartels are both going to be important, and providing services to those who are addicted and can survive is important too,” Frieden said. "It took a generation to get in this bad shape, and it’s not going to be quick for it to get turned around."
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(OPINION) Time to declare war on Big Pharma
Jul 10, 2017 | Newsday
By Christopher Dale
In May, Ohio became the latest and largest government entity to sue major pharmaceutical manufacturers for their role in propagating an opioid addiction crisis.
Statistics there are appalling: In 2016, more than 4,000 Ohioans died from drug overdoses, a 36 percent leap from 2015 and more than any other state. Astoundingly, about 20 percent of Ohio’s population was prescribed an opioid last year.
Closer to home, several counties in New York — including Nassau and Suffolk — have sued Big Pharma for the industry’s role in the widespread distribution of what is, essentially, legal heroin. Illinois, Mississippi, and two counties in California have filed similar suits.
It’s progress. But in a country where about 60,000 people died from overdoses last year, it’s nowhere near enough. Drugs are the leading killer of Americans younger than 50, and more than half of overdoses are attributable to opioids, which, alone, now kill Americans in roughly equal numbers as gun violence.
As a recovering alcoholic, I’ve seen the figures confirm the horrific pattern developing in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous: Increasingly, young people are primarily addicted to opioids rather than alcohol or other drugs.
Though addiction is addiction, all drugs are not created equal. While those who relapse on liquor, marijuana or even cocaine tend to eventually resurface in AA, those who relapse on prescription painkillers or heroin tend to resurface in the obituary pages. Opioids are far more lethal and, with deadly irony, especially likely to lead to overdoses following periods of clean time.
We cannot keep losing our children, spouses and dear friends. This has to stop — now.
Like in politics, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. To save lives, state and local governments must follow suit by filing suit. It sounds incredible given the slumbering pace and corporate privilege that permeate our legal system, but the most effective way to reach this goal is through the courts.
It’s time for a war on drug companies, a fight whose outcome will be determined more by the number of legal battles than their individual outcomes. The goal isn’t seven-figure settlements, but rather persistent pressure and public shaming. So, the slow trickle of lawsuits must become a raging river — a flood that inundates Big Pharma with costly legal defenses and even more costly publicity disasters.
Articles have been written debating whether governments have a legal leg to stand on in suing Big Pharma over the opioid epidemic. They point out that — unlike tobacco, the closest historical example — opioid painkillers actually have a viable medical use.
What they ignore is a far more important comparison: Opioids can accomplish in 20 minutes what it takes tobacco 20 years to do. Namely, kill consumers.
We cannot keep losing our children, spouses and dear friends. This has to stop — now.
Like in politics, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. To save lives, state and local governments must follow suit by filing suit. It sounds incredible given the slumbering pace and corporate privilege that permeate our legal system, but the most effective way to reach this goal is through the courts.
It’s time for a war on drug companies, a fight whose outcome will be determined more by the number of legal battles than their individual outcomes. The goal isn’t seven-figure settlements, but rather persistent pressure and public shaming. So, the slow trickle of lawsuits must become a raging river — a flood that inundates Big Pharma with costly legal defenses and even more costly publicity disasters.
Articles have been written debating whether governments have a legal leg to stand on in suing Big Pharma over the opioid epidemic. They point out that — unlike tobacco, the closest historical example — opioid painkillers actually have a viable medical use.
What they ignore is a far more important comparison: Opioids can accomplish in 20 minutes what it takes tobacco 20 years to do. Namely, kill consumers.
New York
Illinois
Cherokee Nation (OK)
General Coverage
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