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Opioid Litigation Media Report (9/11/17)
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Same law firm representing counties in opioid lawsuits
Sep 8, 2017 | Time Herald-Record (NY)
By Chris McKenna
Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties are all being represented by the same law firm in mushrooming litigation that states, counties and cities have brought against the makers of OxyContin and other painkillers to demand repayment for taxpayer costs the opioid epidemic has caused. -
Opioid maker bent rules to get drug to patients, Senate report says Newburgh Gazette
Sep 10, 2017 | Newburgh-Gazette
By Dwayne Harmon
Insys Therapeutics faked cancer patients in order to boost sales of its drug Subsys, a sprayable form of the opioid painkiller fentanyl, according to a federal indictment and ongoing congressional investigation by Sen. -
US Drug Maker Faked Cancer Patients To Sell Addictive Opioids, Congressional Report Finds (UPDATE)
Sep 9, 2017 | Gizmodo
By Rhett Jones
This week, United States Senator Claire McCaskill released a report on the findings of a congressional investigation into the practices of pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics. The jaw-dropping allegations detail the process in which agents systematically convinced insurers to pay for a highly-addictive opioid cancer pain drug for patients who didn't have cancer. -
Opioid litigation shouldn't profit lawyers over patients (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | The HIll
By Tiger Joyce
President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, following a recommendation from a White House commission led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that urged the president to do just that. -
Ohio's Opioid Suit Should Be Thrown Out, Purdue Pharma Argues
Sep 9, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley and Jared S. Hopkins
The state of Ohio’s lawsuit against opioid maker Purdue Pharma should be thrown out because it runs afoul of federal drug regulations and doesn’t show the company’s Oxycontin painkiller marketing caused specific harm, according to a court filing. -
Toledo should join list of communities taking drug firms to court (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | The Blade
By Editorial Board
Solving the opioid epidemic in Toledo and around Ohio certainly will not be as easy as winning a courtroom victory against pharmaceutical companies. But a judgment or a settlement in such a case could go a long way toward funding the larger fight and holding those companies accountable for their part in the crisis. -
FYI: A Month Has Passed Since Trump Declared an Opioid Emergency. What Next? (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | New York Times
By Maggie Haberman
When President Trump announced in early August, following a presidential commission’s recommendations, that the opioid crisis was a “national emergency,” he called it “a serious problem the likes of which we have never had.” -
WTIC Fox 61 The Real Story
Sep 10, 2017 | WTIC (Fox)
By Hartford, CT
VIDEO LINK: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29269215?token=ac6df77d-0ae6-4780-a5e0-c01503e663c2 -
KFDA News at 10pm
Sep 8, 2017 | KFDA (CBS)
By Amarillo, TX
VIDEO LINK: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29269230?token=ac6df77d-0ae6-4780-a5e0-c01503e663c2
Traditional Media Coverage
Broadcast Media Report
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Same law firm representing counties in opioid lawsuits
Sep 8, 2017 | Time Herald-Record (NY)
By Chris McKenna
Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties are all being represented by the same law firm in mushrooming litigation that states, counties and cities have brought against the makers of OxyContin and other painkillers to demand repayment for taxpayer costs the opioid epidemic has caused.
Ulster officials, who already had announced their intent to join the lawsuits, decided last week to enlist Simmons Hanly Conroy, the same firm handling cases on behalf of Orange, Sullivan and about nine other New York counties so far. A second firm, Napoli Shkolnik, has brought similar lawsuits on behalf of at least two counties in New York. Both firms also are taking on cities and states around the U.S. as clients in a legal strategy modeled on successful litigation states brought against tobacco makers in the 1990s.
The premise of the counties’ cases is that the pharmaceutical companies and several key doctors who promoted opioid use and concealed the risk of addiction should be held responsible for the drugs’ monetary toll.
“From our perspective, we have invested heavily in the health of our community,” Ulster County Executive Mike Hein said. “We are up against a multi-billion industry that has invested heavily against the health of our community.”
Paul Hanly, lead attorney for the New York cases, said the lawsuits will seek reimbursement for what counties have spent on drug rehabilitation, hospital treatment, overdose autopsies and other public costs of opioid addiction.
“There’s a whole spectrum of kinds of damages that counties have incurred that we would strive to recover,” Hanly said.
All of the New York cases have been assigned to a single judge in Suffolk County on Long Island, where Hanly’s firm filed its first lawsuit about a year ago. Hanly, who said his firm is talking with up to a dozen other New York counties about joining the litigation, estimates the cases could take two to five years to reach a resolution. By then, he expects more than 1,000 jurisdictions - states, counties and cities - around the country will have filed lawsuits.
The goal of the lawsuits is to force drug makers into a massive settlement similar to one that 46 states reached with the four largest tobacco manufacturers in 1998. As a result of those lawsuits, New York and its counties collect significant sums from tobacco companies each year and will continue to do so through 2025. The payments this year included $600 million for the state, $3.4 million for Orange County, $2 million for Ulster County and $931,000 for Sullivan County.
Counties have no restrictions on how they spend tobacco settlement money. Orange County officials say they use their payments to defray the costs of Medicaid, since smoking causes medical problems.
Defendants in New York’s opioid cases include Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin; Teva Pharmaceuticals and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, both of which make fentanyl; and Endo Pharmaceuticals, which makes Percocet. Counties pay nothing to participate in the litigation. Hanly’s firm would keep a percentage of the drug makers’ future settlement payment and recover its expenses through that payout if and when it reaches that stage.
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Opioid maker bent rules to get drug to patients, Senate report says Newburgh Gazette
Sep 10, 2017 | Newburgh-Gazette
By Dwayne Harmon
Insys Therapeutics faked cancer patients in order to boost sales of its drug Subsys, a sprayable form of the opioid painkiller fentanyl, according to a federal indictment and ongoing congressional investigation by Sen.
Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., will hold a roundtable on September 12 with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to present details on Insys Therapeutics' sales and marketing strategies, among other opioid manufacturers.
Late previous year, federal prosecutors criminally charged the company's former CEO and five other executives with fraud and racketeering charges related to Subsys. Since the drug has a high cost and insurers won't pay for it without advanced approval, called "prior-authorization", Insys had to find a way around this.
Insys is now under a congressional investigation led by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (D), who recently discovered that the company doctored medical records in order to promote a highly unsafe fentanyl spray called Subsys.
The details of both the phone call and the report help flesh out what is already a disturbing picture of unchecked pharmaceutical marketing that has emerged from a growing raft of documents in criminal cases and civil lawsuits involving the beleaguered drug maker. An employee would then call the insurer and its affiliates to persuade them into approving the payment for the prescription. The employee claims that they are "with" the patient's doctor's office and pretends to be flipping through the patient's transcript and says out loud that Subsys is "intended for the management of breakthrough cancer pain". To work around that, Insys allegedly called insurance companies and tricked them into okaying the drug for non-cancer patients.
This technique worked on countless occasions. That's how Subsys fell into the hands of Sarah Fuller, a New Jersey resident who was given the spray to treat her fibromyalgia and back pain. The insurance companies were under the impression they were talking with someone at the doctor's office based on a carefully written script that the Insys employees read from. The woman died about in 2016 from a Subsys overdose.
Saeed Motahari took over as CEO of Insys in April and in a letter to McCaskill's office he wrote that, "Over the past several years, Insys has actively taken the appropriate steps to place ethical standards of conduct and patient interests at the heart of our business decisions". The six executives that were indicted in December have submitted not guilty pleas while other lower level employees have admitted their guilt in the scheme.
The defendants have all pled not-guilty to the charges, unlike their former colleague Karen Hill. Wednesday's report is part of a broader probe into opioid manufacturers including Purdue, Johnson & Johnson, Mylan, and Depomed.
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US Drug Maker Faked Cancer Patients To Sell Addictive Opioids, Congressional Report Finds (UPDATE)
Sep 9, 2017 | Gizmodo
By Rhett Jones
This week, United States Senator Claire McCaskill released a report on the findings of a congressional investigation into the practices of pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics. The jaw-dropping allegations detail the process in which agents systematically convinced insurers to pay for a highly-addictive opioid cancer pain drug for patients who didn't have cancer.
The case of Insys's corrupt practices have led to a federal criminal indictment against six former executives on fraud and racketeering charges. McCaskill's office is leading an ongoing investigation into the complex web of deception that was allegedly employed by the company to trick insurance companies into covering the costs of a sprayable form of fentanyl called Subsys.
The powerful opioid was approved for use by cancer patients in 2012 and due to its high costs, insurers required "prior-authorization" before they would pay. But according to the report, Insys found that it wasn't selling enough of the drug to cancer patients and implemented a program to expand its use through a combination of paying illegal kickbacksto doctors and having salespeople use scripts to mislead insurance reps.
McCaskill's report details one such call that you can listen to here. In the recording, an Insys employee contacts the insurance company to obtain prior approval and, using a script, gives the impression that they are calling on behalf of the doctor's office. The employee claims that they are "with" the patient's doctor's office and pretends to be flipping through the patient's transcript and says out loud that Subsys is "intended for the management of breakthrough cancer pain." With that full phrase being established, the Insys rep then says the patient has "breakthrough pain." Multiple times, two different employees from the insurance company pressed the obfuscating employee about whether the drug was being prescribed for "breakthrough cancer pain" and each time the rep's answer left out the word cancer.
This technique worked on countless occasions. In this particular case, the slippery Insys representative was calling on behalf of a woman from New Jersey named Sarah Fuller. Fuller died of a Subsys overdose in 2016.
Saeed Motahari took over as CEO of Insys in April and in a letter to McCaskill's office he wrote that, "Over the past several years, Insys has actively taken the appropriate steps to place ethical standards of conduct and patient interests at the heart of our business decisions." According to Reuters, an Insys press release claimed that the company "disagreed with 'certain characterizations' in McCaskill's report."
The congressional investigation into Insys's apparent systemic corruption will continue and former employees face their own individual legal troubles. The six executives that were indicted in December have submitted not guilty pleas while other lower level employees have admitted their guilt in the scheme.
In July, Natalie Levine, a sales rep who is married to the company's former-CEO Michael Babich, pleaded guilty to charges of paying illegal kickbacks to doctors. Levine told prosecutors that she taught sales reps to look "for doctors that are money hungry," and "might be willing to 'play ball,'" according to court documents.
It's not yet clear where McCaskill's investigation will lead. Wednesday's report is part of a broader probe into opioid manufacturers including Purdue, Johnson & Johnson, Mylan, and Depomed.
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Opioid litigation shouldn't profit lawyers over patients (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | The HIll
By Tiger Joyce
President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, following a recommendation from a White House commission led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that urged the president to do just that.
Last month, the commission wrote in a report that more than 100 Americans die of drug overdoses every day, meaning America is “enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks.” To address this problem successfully, elected policymakers, the expert regulators they appoint, the medical and scientific communities, and law enforcement must work cooperatively to advance the interests of public health and safety. That must be their sole focus.
Unfortunately, a number of states, counties and municipalities have filed lawsuits in recent weeks demanding that manufacturers, wholesale drug distributors and pharmacies pay for the clean-up of the problem.
Never mind that these products were approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and their production quotas were annually increased and approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and these very same states have always had regulatory authority over the physicians and pharmacies that prescribed and dispensed the products. It’s always easier to pass the buck.
Perhaps equally predictably most of these same governments have decided to pursue litigation at the urging of plaintiff lawyers who stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if they are successful. Typically, these arrangements pay plaintiff lawyers roughly one-third of the take plus their expenses. As a result, the incentive for plaintiff lawyers is to maximize their fees irrespective of the public interest.
Strong evidence of this problem can be found in investigations by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series. Such reporting has shown how personal injury lawyers often shop their ideas for potentially lucrative lawsuits against corporate defendants to friendly governmental officials, most prominently state attorneys general, whom they also support with generous campaign contributions.
Lawsuits brought by powerful state or local governments must serve the public interest, and not merely the profit-seeking interests of politically influential members of the plaintiffs’ bar.
Drawing a bright line between these obviously conflicting interests has been a policy priority for the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) for more than a decade, animating our drive to enact commonsense statutes — in 18 states thus far — that promote accountability and transparency when public authorities feel compelled to hire outside counsel to initiate major litigation.
In fact, ATRA was part of the successful 2015 effort to enact such a statute in Ohio, where Attorney General Mike DeWine has hired outside counselas “consultants” in his lawsuit against makers of opioid pain medications.
Among those consultants is former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, whose private-sector associates in precedent-setting, multistate litigation against tobacco companies 20 years ago were widely reported to have netted more than $1.6 billion in fees without ever providing citizens a full accounting of the work they performed.
ATRA has also worked to develop common sense reforms, like limits on contingency fees and greater transparency in government contracting for private lawyers.
ATRA urges lawmakers across the country to work together to pass common sense reforms that would rein in the potential for abuse and corruption that comes when governments hand over the power of the state to private lawyers looking only for personal enrichment.
Attorneys general and other government officials who bring these cases put their reputations and the integrity of their offices at risk when they rely on the private contingency fee lawyers to represent the public interest. Moreover, it is essential that, as with broader policymaking, any litigation must serve the public interest, not the profit motives of outside counsel.
Tiger Joyce is president of the American Tort Reform Association in Washington, D.C.
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Ohio's Opioid Suit Should Be Thrown Out, Purdue Pharma Argues
Sep 9, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley and Jared S. Hopkins
The state of Ohio’s lawsuit against opioid maker Purdue Pharma should be thrown out because it runs afoul of federal drug regulations and doesn’t show the company’s Oxycontin painkiller marketing caused specific harm, according to a court filing.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue filed its response late Friday in state court in Ohio to Attorney General Mike DeWine’s May suit, accusing the pharmaceutical firm and four other opioid makers of using misleading marketing to dupe doctors into over-prescribing opioids.
The Purdue filing is one of the first corporate legal responses to a recent wave of statesuits against opioid makers as lawmakers seek to handle the fallout from abuse, addiction and overdoses. Last month, President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, clearing the way for extra funding to address the wave of drug-related deaths.
More than 22,000 Americans died from prescription opioid overdoses in the U.S. in 2015, an increase from 19,000 the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A study in the October 2016 issue of Medical Care Journal put the economic cost of opioid overdose, abuse and dependence at $78.5 billion. Health care accounts for about a third of that cost, while expenses for lost productivity in non-fatal cases add another $20 billion, according to the journal published by Wolters Kluwer.
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for DeWine, declined to comment on Purdue’s response to the opioid suit, saying the office “doesn’t comment beyond our court filings.’’FDA Approved
Purdue contends that since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Oxycontin for use as a painkiller, and approved its safety warnings, federal law bars Ohio from seeking to hold it liable under state law.
Unlike suits brought against tobacco makers that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1999, cases focusing on opioids are targeting a government-regulated product. That means judges must defer to the FDA’s finding that the painkillers are safe and effective, and that Purdue properly disclosed addiction risks on its warning label, according to the company’s filing.
The state of Ohio’s claims are "preempted by federal law because they would require Purdue to make statements about the safety and efficacy of its medications that are different from what the FDA approved,’’ the company’s lawyers said in the filing, which couldn’t be verified in court dockets.Specific Harm
The state’s suit also is flawed because it doesn’t provide evidence of specific harm caused by its allegedly overly aggressive Oxycontin marketing, according to the Purdue filing.
DeWine’s complaint “does not identify a single physician who prescribed one of Purdue’s opioid medications to any patient when it was allegedly medically unnecessary, much less, a physician who did so because of Purdue’s allegedly misleading marketing or promotional materials,’’ the company said in the filing.
Lawyers suing Purdue and other opioid makers on behalf of state attorneys general have said in the past that since the suits focus on allegedly illegal marketing tactics used to push Oxycontin, they aren’t vulnerable to the company’s preemption arguments.
While the FDA has broad regulatory power over the safety and efficacy of drugs sold in the U.S., it has less comprehensive oversight of marketing efforts, lawyers for the states contend. They also note many states have their own consumer-protection laws that govern pharmaceutical marketing.
Purdue, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Endo Health Solutions and Allergan Plc also asked Ohio Judge Scott Nusbaum Friday to put DeWine’s case on hold while the FDA does further studies of opioids’ risks, according to court filings.
The case is State of Ohio v. Purdue Pharma LP, No. CV 17 CI 000261, Ohio Court of Common Pleas (Ross County).
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Toledo should join list of communities taking drug firms to court (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | The Blade
By Editorial Board
Solving the opioid epidemic in Toledo and around Ohio certainly will not be as easy as winning a courtroom victory against pharmaceutical companies. But a judgment or a settlement in such a case could go a long way toward funding the larger fight and holding those companies accountable for their part in the crisis.
Toledo Democratic mayoral candidate Wade Kapszukiewicz says the city should join Dayton, Cincinnati, Lorain, Findlay, and others that have sued large drug makers.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit against five drug manufacturers in May.
Those lawsuits filed this summer blame the companies’ negligent marketing of dangerous painkillers for the current opioid epidemic that killed more than 4,000 Ohioans in 2016.
Incumbent Democratic Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson — who has been in office for about two and a half years as the epidemic raged on — said she did not have an opinion, but would ask the city’s legal department to study the matter.
Their Republican opponent, City Councilman Tom Waniewski, said legal fees for such a case would be better spent directly on the fight — paying for education and resources for law enforcement.
Mr. Waniewski pointed to other lawsuits, saying that Toledo would do better to spend its money on other opioid-fighting initiatives and let the state fund the legal fight against pharmaceutical companies.
In May, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit against five drug manufacturers. Other state attorneys general — in West Virginia and Mississippi — have filed similar lawsuits. The Mississippi case is still working its way through the courts, but in West Virginia’s case, the state has been able to get a settlement of $20 million from Ohio’s Cardinal Health.
That kind of settlement money will help West Virginia fund its fight against the epidemic, paying for treatment and enlightened enforcement.
Ohio — and Toledo — could benefit from a similar settlement.
There were 288 confirmed opioid overdose deaths across a 21-county region of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan last year. That tops the 215 fatal opioid overdoses in the region recorded in 2015 and 145 in 2014.
Taking drug companies to court should not be taken lightly. These lawsuits will be expensive and time-consuming, and there is no guarantee of victory for the cities and states that file them.
But Toledo has a big stake in this fight and leaving it to other cities or state attorneys general is not necessarily the safe choice in this case. Having the winning court strategy or forcing a settlement from the drug makers may be a matter of getting enough plaintiffs and enough legal minds from enough cities and states to join the fight.
Moreover, a victory could mean substantial funds for Drug Abuse Response Teams, expanded drug courts, more overdose-reversing naloxone for first responders, and more treatment facilities.
Joining the list of communities taking drug companies to court is a risk and an investment, but this is a battle Toledo should seriously consider.
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FYI: A Month Has Passed Since Trump Declared an Opioid Emergency. What Next? (OPINION)
Sep 10, 2017 | New York Times
By Maggie Haberman
When President Trump announced in early August, following a presidential commission’s recommendations, that the opioid crisis was a “national emergency,” he called it “a serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
A month has now passed, and that urgent talk has yet to translate into urgent action. While the president’s aides say they are pursuing an expedited process, it remains to be seen how and by what mechanism Mr. Trump plans to direct government resources.
While the president’s opioid commission, led by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has urged him to move swiftly, Mr. Trump and his cabinet — primarily his health secretary, Tom Price — are trying to determine how best to move forward amid warnings from deficit hawks within the administration about the potential costs.
As with many of his campaign promises, Mr. Trump is discovering the realities of limited government resources, slow-moving agencies and the competing agendas of cabinet members, even as they try to push in the same general direction. The hurricanes that have struck Texas and Florida, and the costly recovery that will follow, appear to have complicated the process.
Mr. Christie, in a statement issued to The New York Times, said that the White House Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis was “continuing its work” and was eager to “begin to push back on this scourge, which is killing so many Americans unnecessarily.”
Patrick J. Kennedy, the former Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, who also serves on the commission, said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Price “both know this is going to mark their time in office.”
During the primary campaign last year, Mr. Trump surged to victory in New Hampshire in part on his promise to focus on the opioid crisis, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and shown little sign of abating. The issue was championed most forcefully in that primary by Mr. Christie, who has spoken about the need for benevolence in treating addiction as a disease rather than a crime.
A Times study of reports of drug deaths in 2016 found that there were most likely more than 59,000, the highest on record.
In an interim report issued on July 31, Mr. Christie’s commission recommended a declaration of a national emergency. In a statement that caught most of his advisers by surprise, and which contradicted what Mr. Price had said days earlier, Mr. Trump told reporters on Aug. 10 that he was moving forward.
“The opioid crisis is an emergency. And I’m saying officially right now, it is an emergency. It’s a national emergency,” the president said at the time. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis.”
His statements have left advisers scrambling to fulfill his pledge, creating a long lag between a presidential statement and an actual action to follow it.
A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said the administration was reviewing options and putting the report through an expedited legal process.
Mr. Christie and other members of the commission are aware that the chances of pushing a funding bill through a log-jammed Congress are slim.
A law known as the Stafford Act is the option that would be likely to free up the most money. But it would be allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which traditionally focuses on recovery after physical disasters, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, or the recent hurricanes.
The report calls the roughly 142 Americans who die from opioid overdoses every day “a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks.” Among its recommendations is a law shielding people who report overdoses, an expansion of Medicaid-funded drug treatment, and a requirement that law enforcement officers carry naloxone, which counteracts the effects of an overdose.
Administration officials said that cabinet officials were seriously considering the possibility of making naloxone widely available. But other recommendations in the report appear less certain to be acted on swiftly.
When Mr. Christie presented the report to Mr. Trump’s advisers roughly six weeks ago, he was greeted with some skepticism over the Stafford Act recommendation, according to two people briefed on the discussion. Among them was Thomas P. Bossert, the president’s Homeland Security adviser, who took issue with the prospect that resources could be moved away from responding to a natural disaster, according to the two people briefed.
Mr. Christie left it in the report, and the president made the declaration — but without a clear directive. The president is said to be aware that there are not enough treatment options available, that opioids are being overprescribed by doctors and that there needs to be a greater effort toward deterring people from using drugs in the first place.
One administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Stafford Act option was extremely unlikely, especially as hurricanes have slammed into the coasts of Texas and Florida in the last few weeks.
Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, who has become the point person within the West Wing on the issue, has repeatedly traveled the country with Mr. Price to address what she called a “nonpartisan issue.”
“No state has been spared, and no demographic group is untouched,” she said. “We hope politicians of all persuasions and leaders across many industries will join us in educating and engaging a public grappling with rampant addiction and a rise in deaths.”
But beyond Ms. Conway, it is not clear who among the senior administration officials is pushing Mr. Trump to make good on his statement.
John F. Kelly, the president’s second chief of staff, has become engaged with the issue and is getting up to speed, but has come to the table late in the process. He is said to be interested in a swift solution.
The Office of American Innovation, led by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, helped establish the commission, but is not expected to play a strong role, two White House officials said. The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, has been concerned about the potential cost.
And the message of benevolence toward drug users has been at odds with the tone set by the president’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who has been pushing more aggressive, war-on-drugs-style tactics in cities. The president himself has been prone to such language at times, creating a whipsaw effect.
In the meantime, several governors have declared states of emergency over the opioid crisis, including Florida’s.
While the federal funding for a national emergency declaration may not come from a pot for disaster relief, Mr. Kennedy said the twin hurricanes that have ravaged the United States had, if anything, clarified the scale of the challenge.
“It’s going to require, obviously, a state of emergency” to deal with opioids, said Mr. Kennedy, himself a recovering addict. “And it’s going to require however many dollars are necessary to meet the demand, however we ultimately assess that demand.”
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Sep 10, 2017 | WTIC (Fox)
By Hartford, CT
Rough Transcript: cities like waterbury, and towns too, are suing for major pharmaceutical companies over the opioid overdose crisis. they are 10:13 AMcontending that the manufacturers helped create this addiction epidemic by deliberately misrepresenting the risks of opioid painkillers, claiming they were perfectly safe and effective even for minor ailments such as headaches and lower back pain. while the legal battle plays out, other action is underway in other corners to educate the public and prevent overdose deaths. this morning, you are going to hear how middlesex hospital in middletown is trying to make a difference. joining me are doctor michael saxe, chairman emeritus of the department of emergency medicine for more than three decades, and doctor rachel lovins, she is chair of the department of medicine at middlesex. and we thank you very much for being here with us today. all right, so let's start with what you are up to at the hospital. i'm sure it is education and prevention, but is there more to it than that? - we are approaching this from two angles. the first is to recognize that prescribing opioids is one of the primary root causes of this opioid epidemic. we are working hard to educate the public and our prescribing medical staff to dramatically reduce the prescribing of opioids, both in the hospital and in middlesex county. - what led to this in the first place? was it that patients were demanding, i need something for my pain, i can't stand it anymore, and so the doctors were encouraged to prescribe more? is that what's ... ? - well, as you said in your intro, beginning in the late 90s, new opioids came out that were approved by the federal drug administration, including primarily oxycontin. and that was marketed very aggressively to the public in two physicians throughout the country, that pain was undertreated in the united states, and that opioids were a safe alternative that were not addicting. we now know that they were not a safe alternative and they are addicting. of course, the most common reason that patients come to see physicians is for the treatment of pain. a whole generation of physicians and prescribers were incorrectly educated that opioids were appropriate to prescribe.
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Sep 8, 2017 | KFDA (CBS)
By Amarillo, TX
Rough Transcript: the new mexico attorney general's office is suing opiod manufacturers for fueling the state's drug addiction cris. attorney general hector balderas announced the filing today against five of the nation's largest opioid manufacturers and three major wholesale distributors. the suit accuses opioidmanufacturers of aggressively pushing highly addictive and dangerous drugs and falsely representing to doctors that patients would rarely succumb to addiction. new mexico's drug overdose death rate is far above the national average. the opiod epidemic is the subject of a local study. the texas tech health science center of amarillo decided to use medicine collected during their drug take back program as the basis for the study. they found that over half of the 10 thousand bottles collected over a five year period were opiod medications. and, those prescriptions had about half of a bottle left, leading to the conclusion many may have been over-prescribed.. doctors can easily prescribe a smaller quantity the concern with patients is generally that they have to pay a second co pay for the medication.they may have to go back to the physician to get the additional quantity.
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