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Opioid Daily Report (8/21)
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Westchester to join counties in lawsuit against big pharmas
Aug 21, 2017 | MidHudsonNews.Com
From 2010 through 2015, 334 people died in Westchester County opioids and the county Board of Legislators wants to change the rising tide. -
Counties consider lawsuits as opiate crisis continues
Aug 21, 2017 | The Daily News (NY)
By Joe Leathersich
Treatment measures are an ongoing effort when it comes to tackling the nation’s heroin/opioid epidemic. -
Columbiana County joining lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Aug 21, 2017 | WFMJ (OH)
By Gabby Fellows
The Columbiana County Commissioners are joining in on a lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers. -
Dr. John Henning Schumann: The opioid crisis is a national emergency (OPINION)
Aug 20, 2017 | Tulsa World
By Dr. John Henning Schumann
Sixty thousand Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2016. This is more people than have ever died in a single year in motor vehicle accidents in the United States. It’s more than died fighting for the U.S. during the entirety of the war in Vietnam. -
The war moves to the source (OPINION)
Aug 20, 2017 | Morning Journal
By Staff
The opioid addiction crisis in Columbiana County shows no signs of abating, it is, instead, rapidly worsening. Rarely a day goes by when reports of overdoses are not listed in our police pages, or our court news doesn’t include those being tried for drug abuse or trafficking. -
Senator Claire “Conflict of Interest” McCaskill (OPINION)
Aug 19, 2017 | Huffpost
By Bruce Fein
Has United States Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) no sense of ethics? Is she not embarrassed by her glaring conflict of interest in advancing the interests of pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts that generously underwrites her political ambitions? -
Huntington firm leading group filing opioid cases across the country
Aug 18, 2017 | West Virginia Record
By Chris Dickerson
A Huntington-based firm is leading a legal team that recently has filed nearly a dozen federal lawsuits on behalf of government agencies from Ohio and Alabama against drug companies for their alleged role in the opioid epidemic. -
WFMJ 21 News at 11, Weekend Today
Aug 18, 2017 | WFMJ (NBC)
By Youngstown, OH
VIDEO LINK:http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28937683?token=2c3cef19-5a74-4271-879d-4b52c61e0c7b Rough Transcript: "the columbiana county commissioners are joing in on a lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers. a cleveland law firm tells 21 news that they approached the commissioners. the goal is to push back against the companies that they say, have lead to the rising number of opioid addicts who overdose and die. the lawsuit alleges that the manufacturers knew the risks of the drugs, before pushing them into the market. meanwhile, community members in erie coutny ohio say they are fed up with the overdose epidemic. a petion has gained more than 100 thousand signatures- asking that the laws are changed, sot that overdose victims are charged with a crime. part of the petion reads- it's time to start making these people own up to what they are doing, it's time to take away everything they own and give them a dose of reality while they sit in a cell and think about what it is they are doing."
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Westchester to join counties in lawsuit against big pharmas
Aug 21, 2017 | MidHudsonNews.Com
From 2010 through 2015, 334 people died in Westchester County opioids and the county Board of Legislators wants to change the rising tide.
The lawmakers are in the discussion process of joining a lawsuit by several counties against pharmaceutical manufacturers that produce prescription opioid painkillers. The county will allege those companies misrepresented the safety of those drugs.
Westchester will join the ranks of eight other New York counties that are suing big pharma – Dutchess, Rockland, Ulster, Orange, Nassau, Suffolk, Broome and Erie.
“Opioids and other addictive prescription drugs manufactured, distributed and widely dispenses in this country have caused devastating impacts on the health and safety of residents and are a financial drain on governments paying for public services to affected residents,” said Legislator Lyndon Williams of Mount Vernon, chairman of the Committee on Litigation. “The Westchester community is not immune from these impacts.”
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Counties consider lawsuits as opiate crisis continues
Aug 21, 2017 | The Daily News (NY)
By Joe Leathersich
Treatment measures are an ongoing effort when it comes to tackling the nation’s heroin/opioid epidemic.
But municipalities are looking to bring accountability what they believe is the source — and they’re willing to take legal action.
Going to the source
The Wyoming County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a resolution to allow the County Attorney’s office to begin researching the feasibility and plausibility of bringing a potential class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies that create opiate-based drugs.
Wyoming County isn’t the only municipality in the area to consider such a measure. To the north, Genesee County also has the ball rolling to see what kind of suit can be presented.
The research comes on the heels of a major lawsuit out of Ohio.
Back in May, Attorney General Mike DeWine of Ohio, on behalf of the entire state, filed a lawsuit against a slew of pharmaceutical companies. It maintains that the drug manufacturers, through marketing campaigns, misled prescribers and patients about the addictive nature of opiate-based drugs.
“It’s almost like the big pharmaceutical companies borrowed a page out of the playbook of big tobacco,” said Wyoming County Public Health Administrator Laura Paolucci.
In Ohio’s case against pharmaceutical manufacturers, DeWine maintains the latter developed a marketing campaign that was in violation of an Ohio corruption act “for the purpose of illegally promoting the widespread use of opioids for chronic pain.”
“Each (manufacturer) knew that its misrepresentations of the risks and benefits of opioids were not supported by or were directly contrary to the scientific evidence,” he wrote in the suit.
The state of Ohio has been hit hard by the epidemic, as communicated through data provided by suit.
According to DeWine, in 2012, enough drugs were prescribed to provide 68 pills to every person living in the state, including those less than 18 years old. In 2016, about 20 percent of the state’s population received an opioid prescription.
And he’s positing that these prescriptions are leading to deaths: Ohio saw a statistically-significant 13 percent increase in overdose-related deaths from 2015 to 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.
In that category, New York State is worse: from 2015 to 2016, New York saw a 13.3 percent increase in overdose-related deaths — the third highest increase nationwide.
In Wyoming County specifically, according to the Board of Supervisors, the adjusted rate of overdose deaths is 10 per 100,000, which is above the state average.
Following the resolution Tuesday, the Wyoming County Attorney’s Office has 60 days to put information a recommendation on how, if at all, the county should precede — whether that means to file individually, with other municipalities or not at all.
“Certainly our county has been so supportive,” Paolucci said.
Epidemic Efforts
Filing a lawsuit is not municipalities passing the buck for the crisis — Paolucci knows full well how much Wyoming County and surrounding communities are trying to battle opiates.
There’s the task force between Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming County that Paolucci said has over 150 participants ranging from public officials to health professionals.
But even still, there’s more to be done.
“One of the things we heard loud and clear is people don’t know what to do,” Paolucci said of affected families reaching out to the health department. “I think it’s been a little hard for a lot of residents to understand that we really do have an issue with opiate use and heroin abuse in this county.”
She said at Tuesday’s meeting that it’s a complex issue that needs a complex answer. When asked what she meant by that, she gave a lengthy response that conveys how many moving parts are involved in the epidemic.
“The first piece of it, to my mind, is always prevention,” she said. “While we’re working to acknowledge the challenges that we’re facing now and devise systems that make sense and services that make sense to treat the issue, let’s do our best to go backwards and prevent this from growing in magnitude.
“Right now, for example, while I know there are a lot of good prevention efforts afoot — the school systems are working hard to bring some conversation and education around this — but, to my knowledge, I don’t think there’s an evidence-based opiate prevention program out there that’s been tested in a rural community.”
She then went on about questions that affected families have, which may not be so easy to answer: Where are the bed slots for those programs? Are primary care providers aware of what the resources are? How do family members of addicted individuals get support and do they feel confident enough to go access those services?
“I won’t say many hands make light work but many hands make lighter work,” she said.
Which brings in the accountability piece — the ultimate goal of these lawsuits as efforts at the local level continue.
Paolucci said municipalities are “buckling” under their efforts and the source of the problem has gone largely unchecked.
“All of this is appropriate but in the same regard, somebody should be held accountable,” she said. “This is the principle of it as much as anything else.”
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Columbiana County joining lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Aug 21, 2017 | WFMJ (OH)
By Gabby Fellows
The Columbiana County Commissioners are joining in on a lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers.
Cleveland law firm Lancione & Lancione will represent the county in a lawsuit against three of the largest opioid wholesalers in the country.
A representative from the firm told 21 News that the goal of the lawsuit is to push back against the companies that they say have to lead to the rising number of opioid addicts who overdose and die.
The lawsuit alleges that the manufacturers knew the risks of the drugs before pushing them into the market. It has yet to be filed.
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Dr. John Henning Schumann: The opioid crisis is a national emergency (OPINION)
Aug 20, 2017 | Tulsa World
By Dr. John Henning Schumann
Sixty thousand Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2016. This is more people than have ever died in a single year in motor vehicle accidents in the United States. It’s more than died fighting for the U.S. during the entirety of the war in Vietnam.
Deaths from opioid abuse are a public health crisis. President Trump has declared the crisis a national emergency.
Opioids are manufactured substances that are chemical analogues of opiates, which are naturally occurring extracts of the opium poppy and one of its chief derivatives, morphine.
You know them sometimes by their generic names: morphine, codeine, and fentanyl. You also know some of them by their trade names: Percocet, Oxycontin, and Dilaudid. There are many others.
Heroin is an extremely potent opioid classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule I drug — meaning it is highly addictive and thought to have no therapeutic benefit — so its use, including manufacture, trade or possession, is illegal.
Over the last two decades, the medical profession has undergone major pendulum swings in regard to opioid use. First, in the late 1990s, research and advocacy taught us that in general, doctors were undertreating pain. Some of these ideas came from advocates for patients with specific conditions. Often such recommendations were from doctors on the paid lecture circuit touting newer medications at the behest of pharmaceutical firms.
The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals and health care organizations, went so far as to label pain as a “vital sign,” along with a patient’s weight, temperature and blood pressure.
“If the patient says they have pain, then they have pain,” I was taught. Out the window went our fear of overmedicating patients. We were told that only a small number of patients who were prescribed opioids would ever become addicted.
Using prescription opioids for common chronic conditions such as back pain, headaches, and arthritis wound up creating a culture of people who simply came to depend on a constant monthly supply of opioids. Stories now abound of prescription opioids for acute injuries such as tooth extractions, post-operative pain and sports injuries that turn patients into habituated users.
Opioids work well in the short term (e.g. three to five days). But with longer use, the body’s tolerance increases, and we wind up requiring higher doses to achieve the same pain-relief effect. Sustained use can lead to physical and psychological habituation, such that stopping opioids cold turkey can lead to devastating withdrawal symptoms.
As a consequence of our widening use of prescription opioids, we’ve seen the number of deaths due to opioid overdose increase rapidly, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Last year, it was reported that life expectancy for less-educated, middle-aged white Americans had decreased for the first time in generations. This is attributed in large part to bleak economic prospects, social change and opioid use. These “deaths of despair,” as they’ve been called, are from an increase in suicide and opioid abuse.
Public health and safety in some parts of the country have worsened so drastically that the attorneys general of more than 20 states (including Oklahoma’s Mike Hunter) are suing manufacturers of drugs such as OxyContin, claiming that the companies understated the risks of addiction.
The opioid crisis has sparked much debate about what we can do as a community to help reverse the trend. Many public health forums, including the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s OneVoice health care advocacy task force, are calling for increased resources for mental health and addiction treatment.
Addiction is a medical illness. Criminalizing it instead of offering treatment is counterproductive not only for those in its grip but also for society in general. From a taxpayer’s perspective, treatment is much more cost effective in the long run than incarceration.
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The war moves to the source (OPINION)
Aug 20, 2017 | Morning Journal
By Staff
The opioid addiction crisis in Columbiana County shows no signs of abating, it is, instead, rapidly worsening. Rarely a day goes by when reports of overdoses are not listed in our police pages, or our court news doesn’t include those being tried for drug abuse or trafficking.
Sadly, on many days we publish obituaries for those whose lives have ended much too soon by overdosing on opioids.
We have armed our police and fire departments with naloxone or Narcan to help revive overdose victims. We have devoted more and more money to our county drug task force and, yet, the problem continues to grow. While many may disagree about how we continue to handle this situation, the fact remains — we have a deadly drug epidemic on our hands and it’s costing us many young lives.
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015. Of those deaths, 20,101 were related to prescription pain relievers and 12,900 were related to heroin.
Now Columbiana County commissioners, who have already played a role in the local war on drugs by helping to fund the involvement of police departments on the county drug task force, have decided to take another approach in fighting this dangerous drug crisis.
Commissioners are joining a growing wave of lawsuits being filed against drug wholesalers blamed for playing a major role in Ohio’s opioid crisis.
Commissioners agreed on Wednesday to contract with the Cleveland-area law firm of Lancione & Lancione, which will represent the county in a yet-to-be-filed lawsuit against the three largest wholesalers of opioids in the country. Other counties and cities across Ohio are doing the same.
The suit is focusing on wholesalers because the attorneys believe they are the most at fault for the crisis by providing doctors and pharmacies with way more opioid painkillers than normally needed or could be prescribed, and then failing to properly monitor the situation.
While the focus of the county’s lawsuit will be the distributors, other suits by government agencies, including the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, have been filed against opioid drug manufacturers, alleging they downplayed the addictive power of these painkillers to doctors and used deceptive marketing practices.
Some have compared the coming flood of civil lawsuits against a single industry to the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s filed against tobacco companies by attorneys general from 46 states, including Ohio. Tobacco companies have paid out more than $140 billion to states since then, but only $500 million went to smoking prevention.
While it may take years before any money is realized from these lawsuits, they may start having an effect on the opioid crisis immediately by making the distributors develop better monitoring practices and reducing the distribution to keep less of this deadly drug from making its way into the hands of those who would abuse it.
We’re fighting a war, and anything that might win a battle or two helps.
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Senator Claire “Conflict of Interest” McCaskill (OPINION)
Aug 19, 2017 | Huffpost
By Bruce Fein
Has United States Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) no sense of ethics? Is she not embarrassed by her glaring conflict of interest in advancing the interests of pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts that generously underwrites her political ambitions?
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are middlemen between the insurer, including Medicare, and the pharmacy that disburses prescription drugs. The PBM seeks to negotiate upfront discounts or rebates from the wholesale list prices of prescription drug manufacturers, and to share the deltas with pharmacies to depress the end user price. Three PBM titans, including Express Scripts, control 80-85 percent of the market. In 2015, Express Scripts reported more than $660 million in profits on sales exceeding $25 billion.
The federal government highly regulates the markets in which Express Scripts operates, including Medicare Part D created by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. As a member of health care-related committees, Senator McCaskill is a position to use her legislative clout to boost Express Scripts’ bottom line. Her incentive to do so is obvious even to an ingénue.
Express Scripts employees and its PAC have donated more than $150,000 to McCaskill’s Senate campaigns and her leadership PAC. According to Open Secrets, she was the largest recipient of Express Scripts’ political donations in 2010 and 2012. On its government relations web page, Express Scripts candidly acknowledges that its contributions target legislators who vote or go to bat for polices beneficial to it: “Contributions are disbursed according to the following criteria….Has the candidate voted for or announced positions on issues important to Express Scripts and our plan sponsors and patients?...Has the candidate demonstrated leadership on key committees of importance to our business?”
Senator McCaskill has shown herself worthy of Express Scripts’ contributions.
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens recently awarded a no-bid contract to Express Scripts to track opioid and other prescriptions. The award came two months after McCaskill, wielding her influence as a United States Senator, urged state lawmakers to enact legislation to establish an electronic database of controlled substance prescriptions.
On July 31, 2015, Senator McCaskill presided over a Senate Aging Committee hearing in St. Louis to which an Express Scripts executive, Brian Prim, vice president and general manager of government programs, testified in support of more muscular cost controls on Medicare Part D prescription drugs and specialty medications like those required to treat Hepatitis C.
McCaskill also helped Express Scripts in a contract dispute with Kaleo concerning the price of naloxone, which treats overdosing on opioids. She and other Senators wrote a letter to the CEO of Kaleo complaining about outlandish naloxone price jumps.
Further troublesome is the McCaskill Family Foundation’s stock ownership in Allergan, an opioid manufacturer that has been sued by the Ohio Attorney General for failure to warn users adequately of opioid risks. In March 2017, the Senator announced an investigation into Allergan’s rivals: Purdue Pharma, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Insys, Depomed and Mylan.
Public officials, like Caesar’s wife, should be above suspicion to promote public confidence in government, which is at historic lows. Accordingly, Senator McCaskill should recuse herself from participation in any congressional action that might materially influence the profitability of Express Scripts or the wealth of her family foundation. That might lose her Express Scripts’ donations, but it would gain her public trust, which would be far more valuable to her and the county.
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Huntington firm leading group filing opioid cases across the country
Aug 18, 2017 | West Virginia Record
By Chris Dickerson
A Huntington-based firm is leading a legal team that recently has filed nearly a dozen federal lawsuits on behalf of government agencies from Ohio and Alabama against drug companies for their alleged role in the opioid epidemic.
And more lawsuits are on the way.
“I hand-picked six counties in southern West Virginia,” Paul Farrell Jr. of Greene Ketchum Farrell Bailey & Tweel in Huntington said of the first six cases his team filed against wholesale drug distributors such as AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. “Those six cases started the movement.
“After I filed those, we started looking at the fallout of the opioid epidemic. And it clearly extended beyond the borders of West Virginia. I started building a team of some of the very best men and women I know, not just lawyers. But now, we have a national consortium dedicated to fighting this epidemic.
“This national team is pretty elite, and we will represent our clients with absolute honor and integrity.”
The team includes attorneys from Charleston-based Hill Peterson Carper Bee & Deitzler as well as national firms such as Baron & Budd, Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty & Proctor, McHugh Fuller Law Group, Seif & McNamee, Oths Heiser Miller Waigand & Clagg, Lancoine & Lancoine, Walker Law and Burnside Law.
Just this week, the group filed a case on behalf Portsmouth, Ohio. Other recent cases were filed on behalf of the cities of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Birmingham, Ala. They also are representing the counties of Clermont, Belmont, Brown, Vinton, Jackson, Scioto and Ross in Ohio.
Farrell noted Sam Quinones’ book Dreamland, which detailed how Portsmouth was ravaged by heroin and an influx of prescription pain pills.
He said the team also is representing government entities in Kentucky and Illinois, and Farrell said more lawsuits will be filed soon. He said he expects to be representing at least 60 to 70 government entities eventually, including Lawrence County, Ohio, and Boyd County, Ky., both of which are minutes from Huntington.
Farrell said the impact of the opioid problem is relative.
“I think there are particular populations that have been hit hard, and Alabama, for example, is certainly one of them,” he said. “We try to find the right governmental entity with the stand to best abate the problem. Cincinnati, for example, is one of those. We might also represent Hamilton County, as well. But we’re focusing on the conduct of these wholesale distributors without regard to the boundaries.
““Look, when you look at the Ohio River Valley, it’s Trump Country. Trump Country is fed up and fighting back.
“I’m a firm believe that community-based problems require community-based solutions.”
Farrell said in the chain of drug distribution, each link is required to follow certain laws.
“But nobody really had focused on the role of the wholesale distributor,” he said. “This link failed, and they have, per se, broken the law repeatedly. We are very confident we can establish thousands of violations of law. Some of them already have paid fines to the DEA for these violations.”
Each of the complaints say the wholesale distributors failed to report suspicious orders, and each claims public nuisance, Corrupt Practices Act violations, RICO Act violations and negligence. The lawsuits note that the wholesalers are required to report any orders that are out of the norm.
“Plaintiff has reason to believe each has engaged in unlawful conduct which resulted in the diversion of prescription opioids into our community and that discovery will likely reveal others who likewise engaged in unlawful conduct,” the Ross County, Ohio, complaint states. “Plaintiff names each of the ‘big three’ herein as defendants and places the industry on notice that the citizens of Ross County are taking action to abate the public nuisance plaguing our community.”
Regarding the lawsuits, AmerisourceBergen talked about its role as a middleman between manufacturers making U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs and pharmacies registered by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“We do not have access to patient information, have no capability or desire to encourage prescribing or dispensing of pain medicines and are not qualified to interfere with clinical decisions between patients and their physicians,” the company said in a statement to Law360.com. “Beyond reporting and stopping orders determined to be suspicious, we also provide daily reports about the quantity, type and receiving pharmacy of every single order of controlled substances we distribute to regulatory and enforcement professionals.”
Cardinal Health told Law360.com it cares “deeply about the devastation" from opioid abuse and wants to help combat it.
“We operate as part of a multifaceted and highly regulated health care system — we do not promote, prescribe or dispense prescription medications to members of the public — and believe everyone in that chain, including us, must do their part, which is ultimately why we believe these copycat lawsuits filed against us are misguided, and will do nothing to stem the crisis,” the company said in a statement. “We will defend ourselves vigorously in court and at the same time continue to work alongside regulators, manufacturers, doctors, pharmacists and patients to fight opioid abuse and addiction."
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WFMJ 21 News at 11, Weekend Today
Aug 18, 2017 | WFMJ (NBC)
By Youngstown, OH
VIDEO LINK:http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28937683?token=2c3cef19-5a74-4271-879d-4b52c61e0c7b
Rough Transcript: "the columbiana county commissioners are joing in on a lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers. a cleveland law firm tells 21 news that they approached the commissioners. the goal is to push back against the companies that they say, have lead to the rising number of opioid addicts who overdose and die. the lawsuit alleges that the manufacturers knew the risks of the drugs, before pushing them into the market. meanwhile, community members in erie coutny ohio say they are fed up with the overdose epidemic. a petion has gained more than 100 thousand signatures- asking that the laws are changed, sot that overdose victims are charged with a crime. part of the petion reads- it's time to start making these people own up to what they are doing, it's time to take away everything they own and give them a dose of reality while they sit in a cell and think about what it is they are doing."
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