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Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report 10/10/17
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A veteran New York litigator is taking on opioid makers. They have a history
Oct 10, 2017 | STAT News
By Andrew Joseph
The tip came from the doctors. Patients on painkillers were becoming addicted to opioids, even though they said they were taking them as prescribed. -
Consolidation of 66 opioid suits requested
Oct 10, 2017 | The Logan Banner (WV)
By Courtney Hessler
A Charleston attorney representing a majority of 66 counties and cities nationwide that have lawsuits filed against opioid distributors accused of fueling a national drug epidemic has requested the cases be consolidated into a multidistrict litigation and heard before one judge outside of West Virginia. -
Marathon Co. committee recommends joining proposed opioid lawsuit
Oct 9, 2017 | WSAW (CBS) (WI)
By Staff
One of its committees is recommending Marathon County join the proposed lawsuit against drug manufacturers, if there is one. -
Columbia County panel in favor of suing pharmaceutical industry
Oct 9, 2017 | Portage Daily Register (WI)
By Lyn Jerde
If the Wisconsin Counties Association ever sues the pharmaceutical industry to recover government bodies’ costs for addressing opioid addiction, Columbia County could join in the lawsuit, at no cost to the county. -
Dallas Lawyer Takes on the Drug Industry in a First-of-Its-Kind Federal Case
Oct 9, 2017 | Texas Lawyer (TX)
By John Council
Dallas lawyer Jeffrey Simon recently filed a first of its kind lawsuit in a Texas federal court against several of the nation’s largest drug manufacturers. His client alleges they are complicit in North America’s addiction to prescription pain killers. Simon, a partner in Simon Greenstone Panatier Bartlett represents an East Texas county that is bringing public nuisance, fraud and racketeering allegations against several major drug makers including Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He spoke with Texas Lawyer about how he found a client willing to take on the drug manufacturing industry, why he filed the case in the Eastern District of Texas and how he expects to prove up damages in what could be an extremely challenging case. -
Advocates: Declare opioid abuse issue a national emergency
Oct 10, 2017 | The Herald Dispatch (WV)
By Travis Crum
Some of the people working the front lines against the drug epidemic in Mingo County said they want the White House to declare opioid addiction a national emergency. -
Today in New York
Oct 10, 2017 | WNBC (NBC)
By New York, NY
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992680?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565 -
Good Morning East Texas at 5 AM
Oct 10, 2017 | KLTV (ABC)
By Tyler, TX
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992685?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565 -
Newswest 9 at 6P
Oct 10, 2017 | KWES (NBC)
By Odessa, TX
Video Link :http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992696?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565
Paul Hanly STAT News
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A veteran New York litigator is taking on opioid makers. They have a history
Oct 10, 2017 | STAT News
By Andrew Joseph
The tip came from the doctors. Patients on painkillers were becoming addicted to opioids, even though they said they were taking them as prescribed.
To Paul Hanly, it had the makings of his next big case. On the hunt for patients, his law firm started advertising, and in 2003, it filed its first suits against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin.
Four years later, with Hanly representing 5,000 pain patients, something unusual happened. Purdue settled. It is one of the few instances — maybe the only one, experts say — in which a drug maker agreed to pay individual patients who alleged that it had underplayed the addiction risk of its medications.
A decade later, the smooth, stylish Hanly has again set his sights on opioid manufacturers, this time on behalf of cities and counties in five states. The drug companies, those plaintiffs allege, sought to create a false perception around opioids, seeding a public health and safety crisis that has cost Hanly’s clients hundreds of millions of dollars.
The crisis has paved the way for an escalating fight against painkiller makers. Seemingly every week, more state, county, and city governments launch lawsuits against the drug companies, a barrage of cases that the plaintiffs compare to the litigation against the tobacco industry that resulted in a historic $246 billion settlement in 1998. The bulk of the work is falling to private attorneys; Hanly has been one of the lawyers at the forefront of the movement.
The scope of the cases is far wider than in Hanly’s original case. The new suits, for instance, target not just Purdue, but other major companies, including Endo Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Janssen, among others.
The drug makers have plenty of arguments with which to mount a defense, experts say. They can highlight the steps they have taken over the last decade to cut down on the potential for misuse. They can pin the blame on a full lineup of other parties that also played a role in the opioid crisis, from doctors to drug distributors to patients themselves.
But the ferociously competitive Hanly rejects those arguments, and seems to relish the prospect of claiming another told-you-so victory over major corporations.
“There are a lot of arrogant assholes on the other side of these cases,” the 66-year-old Hanly, a former defense attorney himself, said about his work generally. “And for them to tell you you’re never going to get a dime, and then you get a $100 million settlement, it feels pretty good.”
Hanly also sees the cases as a way to help stem the epidemic, associates said.
“He’s wicked smart about this issue, and he has more knowledge about it than anyone in this country, because he’s been doing it for a long time,” said Mike Moore, the former attorney general of Mississippi, who worked with Hanly on the Purdue lawsuit and is representing several states in cases now.
Drug makers have faced accusations that the core of the opioid crisis has their fingerprints on it for more than a decade. They encouraged greater and longer use of their painkillers, critics have contended, and they tried to cover up clinical evidence that their drugs were more addictive than they acknowledged.
But for the most part, faced with patient lawsuits, they prevailed.
Before Purdue settled in 2007, case after case against the drug maker failed. In statements back then, the company bragged about its legal triumphs and vowed that it would never settle, notching each case on its belt when one was thrown out or judges rejected plaintiffs’ arguments.
One challenge: Judges often viewed the patients as drug addicts.
“You would see that in some cases, judges telling people, ‘You have no one to blame but yourself,’” said Richard Ausness, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, who has written about the failure of the lawsuits.
After Hanly and his colleagues started their suits against Purdue in 2003, they deposed dozens of people and accrued millions of pages of company documents. They brought Moore, a veteran of the tobacco lawsuits, onto the team in 2004 after Moore left his post in Mississippi.
Hanly at the time was also representing a former legal assistant from Purdue’s general counsel’s office, who provided information about the company’s inner workings.
Then, as Hanly tells it, the Justice Department caught wind of the civil litigation and asked if he would help with a budding criminal investigation into Purdue. Hanly was happy to assist; because the documents he had gathered were under a protective order, federal officials subpoenaed his firm to get them.
Three years later, in 2007, Purdue paid $75 million to settle the civil case. Separately, the company and three executives pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that they had misled the government, clinicians, and patients about addiction risks.
Hanly points to two factors that paved the way for a settlement: the pressure of the coinciding criminal investigation, and the resources his firm brought to bear in the case. His firm devoted two dozen lawyers and staff at times and invested millions of dollars in the litigation.
Earlier lawsuits were brought by firms with fewer resources representing just a few patients, Hanly said.
Experts say cities, counties, and states make more sympathetic plaintiffs than individual patients, and a number of states have been able to reach small settlements with drug makers and wholesalers. But there are hurdles they need to overcome in these cases.
Among them: demonstrating that drug makers bear responsibility for the damages. That point needs to be made in the context of a crisis whose roots are multifaceted: Doctors wrote too many prescriptions, drug wholesalers drowned states in pills, and so on. In other words, it’s a long chain from a pharma company’s marketing campaign to hardships suffered by a local government. Similar issues have tripped up lawsuits against gun manufacturers in the past.
“There are so many steps before you get to a bad outcome” for the plaintiffs, said Lars Noah, a law professor at the University of Florida.
Drug makers are also quick to note that their medications are approved by the Food and Drug Administration and regulated by the government — unlike was the case with tobacco. In a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Ohio’s attorney general, for example, Purdue wrote that “the State’s claims against Purdue … 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 its FDA approval.
Asked about the cases being pursued by Hanly, Endo, Purdue, and Janssen said they work to help treat patients with legitimate pain and to prevent the misuse of opioids. Janssen added, “we firmly believe the allegations in these lawsuits are both legally and factually unfounded,” and Purdue said, “we vigorously deny the allegations in these lawsuits and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”
(Purdue is also appealing a Kentucky judge’s ruling in a case filed by STAT, which would unseal a trove of documents.)
Hanly swats away drug makers’ claims as nonsense. In an interview at his firm’s Manhattan offices, he coolly declared that cities and counties were victims of negligence and fraud perpetrated by drug makers.
He views the legal fight against them as a moral one. He’s gone up against pharmaceutical companies in the past over other issues — he sued the maker of the recalled arthritis drug Vioxx over safety concerns — but that, he said, was different.
“It didn’t involve people’s children going to a party and not coming back because they OD’d,” Hanly said. “It didn’t involve people losing their homes because they started taking Vioxx and couldn’t get off it, which is what happened with opioids.”
Beyond the principle, there’s another incentive, one that Hanly is candid about: His firm, Simmons Hanly Conroy, stands to make millions. He is now representing more than a dozen cities and counties in New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Louisiana, and his firm will make about 25 percent of any money its clients are awarded.
“Do we hope at the end of the day to get a $100 million fee or something like that? Sure,” Hanly said. “But if we don’t, will we say it was not worth it? No.”
He added: “We are morally committed to this in addition to being plaintiffs lawyers who are always looking for the next big litigation.”
Before Hanly became a plaintiffs crusader, he spent many years defending large corporations, a glimpse into the life of the lawyers he now faces off against. He also dipped into intellectual property and art law: He represented the family of painter William H. Johnson in a case against the Smithsonian Institution (“That case didn’t work out,” he said, laughing), and Andy Warhol’s estate.
As a plaintiffs attorney for the past two decades, Hanly has sued pharma companies and financial firms, companies over antitrust violations and a priest who sexually abused Haitian boys. He’s involved in the effort to sue the Saudi government for its alleged role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In his office, Hanly keeps a collection of Purdue swag, including a plush gorilla with an OxyContin T-shirt and a small calculator touting the company’s sales figures — reminders of how aggressively the company marketed its product. “They’re phenomenal pieces of evidence to show to a jury,” he said.
Hanly has a deep interest in fashion (“Feel this,” he beckoned as he extended his suit sleeve to a reporter for a 1987 story about men embracing bespoke tailoring) and has three children. But beyond that, his life revolves around work. He has a place in Miami Beach, but “it’s a place to go think about cases.”
Whereas top lawyers can come across as cold or intimidating, Hanly puts people at ease, even as he commands whatever room he’s in, attorneys who know him say.
“He has the unique ability to be a very strong and powerful voice for our side, not giving in or compromising, but at the same time, the way he presents that and the respect he gets from the other side, it avoids getting into the personal fights,” said Karen Barth Menzies, a plaintiffs attorney based in California.
“He doesn’t come in the room thinking he’s the smartest guy,” Moore said. “He can be a team player. Not all good trial lawyers can be team players.”
Still, Hanly isn’t bashful about driving his point home. During the interview, he steered questions not directly about the cases back to what he sees as the drug makers’ villainy. When asked whether he foresaw the full extent of the opioid crisis from his earlier work, he said one development that surprised him was that “other drug companies would be so foolish as to adopt essentially the same marketing tactics that Purdue had adopted.”
The way Hanly explains it, some judges will “be in the pocket of big pharma.” Corporate America is “looking for any way to make the playing field unlevel.”
The pharmaceutical industry and its allies have their own view of lawyers like Hanly. The agencies that have hired firms like his to sue drug makers (and in some cases drug distributors) generally do so on the basis that the attorneys will cover the cost of the litigation and then keep a portion of whatever money they can wring from the companies — what’s called a contingency-fee agreement.
Agencies say they don’t have the manpower or resources to handle these cases without help. But in relying on private attorneys, drug makers and some legal groups argue, public officials are effectively deputizing money-hungry law firms. Call it ambulance chasing, just with government contracts. Some of the arrangements have already been challenged in court.
“Lawsuits brought by state or local governments must serve the public interest, and not merely the profit-seeking interests of politically influential members of the plaintiffs’ bar,” Tiger Joyce, the president of the American Tort Reform Association, wrote in a op-ed last month about the opioid cases.
Hanly still keeps about 20,000 pages of documents from his original case against Purdue, stashed in a storage space in New Jersey. It’s what he calls “the cream of the crop.”
Those documents remain under seal, for now. Hanly said he plans to file a motion to unseal them to use in the current lawsuits and, if that fails, he will try to introduce them into the cases to at least make them available to the defense and judges.
Some experts think that, as with tobacco lawsuits, these cases could get bundled — and a global settlement could be reached. But some question just how effective even a massive settlement would be in tackling a problem as pervasive as opioid addiction.
And as more suits are filed, some experts view them as copycat efforts by politicians attempting to show they’re addressing the epidemic, like moths drawn to a cash-flush flame, without making inroads elsewhere.
“It’s just papering over a very serious problem,” said Noah, the Florida law professor. “But it serves the purposes of the players beautifully, and that’s why we have a sudden uptick in these sorts of lawsuits.”
Hanly doesn’t expect a settlement to end the epidemic. But beyond getting his clients back the millions they’ve lost to the crisis, he also hopes that any additional money would go to education and treatment.
And from his days as defense attorney, he knows there’s a point at which companies want to fold.
“I know,” he said, “when the pain is sufficient.”
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Consolidation of 66 opioid suits requested
Oct 10, 2017 | The Logan Banner (WV)
By Courtney Hessler
A Charleston attorney representing a majority of 66 counties and cities nationwide that have lawsuits filed against opioid distributors accused of fueling a national drug epidemic has requested the cases be consolidated into a multidistrict litigation and heard before one judge outside of West Virginia.
In a motion filed Sept. 25 with the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Charleston attorney James C. Peterson said all 66 cases filed in 11 districts nationwide make similar claims, and consolidation would create better cohesion and efficiency as the cases move forward against the "Big Three" distributors - McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. Peterson's firm represents clients in 46 of those cases.
In West Virginia, Peterson is counsel for Logan County Commission, Cabell County Commission, Kanawha County Commission and Wayne County Commission.
Various pill manufacturers are also named in various lawsuits, including Purdue, Teva/Cephalon, Janssen, Endo, Actavis and Mallinckrodt.
The original allegations made by Huntington at the beginning of 2017 started a rippling effect of cases being filed across the nation. Currently, lawsuits are pending in federal courts in West Virginia, Illinois, Alabama, California, Kentucky, Ohio, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Washington.
The cities and counties allege drug firms breached their duty to monitor, detect, investigate, refuse and report suspicious orders of prescription opiates coming into the states over the past several years - a duty the lawsuits claim companies have under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. West Virginia lawsuits are seeking damages and reimbursement for "the costs associated with past efforts to eliminate the hazards to public health and safety."
The 66 lawsuits claim the businesses were negligent in creating a public nuisance and participated in corrupt practices, Peterson said.
"Every day, more than 90 Americans lose their lives after overdosing on opioids," he said. "The economic burden of prescription opioid misuse alone is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of health care, lost productivity, addiction treatment and criminal justice expenditures."
A Charleston Gazette-Mail investigation revealed that between 2007 and 2012, McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen shipped 423 million pain pills to West Virginia, which has about 1.8 million citizens, before the number of pills started to decrease.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, people who are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin.
Paul T. Farrell Jr., who represents several counties throughout the country, said the companies had paid millions in fines and had licenses suspended for similar allegations.
Peterson wrote that the federal government has recently fined McKesson a record $150 million for failure to report suspicious orders and Cardinal Health was fined $44 million for similar allegations. Peterson also pointed to Purdue's agreement to pay approximately $600 million in fines in 2007 for deceptive marketing regarding the addictive nature of OxyContin.
Peterson argued the best location for the cases to be heard would be Ohio because of its central and easily accessible location, underutilized court system and because it is one of the hardest hit areas represented in all the lawsuits. He also wrote the Big Three each maintains facilities or is headquartered in the state. Illinois would also be satisfactory, he wrote.
"As this national calamity continues to unfold, the federal judiciary should respond with a cohesive and efficient judicial methodology, rather than risking inconsistent decisions on pre-trial issues and duplication of efforts in different federal courts," he said.
The cases have not been progressing in West Virginia recently. Attorneys in the seven original lawsuits have been waiting since June for a federal judge's ruling on whether the lawsuits against the Big Three would be dismissed.
In August, representatives of Cardinal Health caught heat after it listed nearly 2,000 doctors, pharmacists, facilities and organizations that could be "wholly or partially at fault" for the state's opioid crisis, including Lily's Place, which provides medical care for infants suffering from prenatal drug exposure.
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Marathon Co. committee recommends joining proposed opioid lawsuit
Oct 9, 2017 | WSAW (CBS) (WI)
By Staff
One of its committees is recommending Marathon County join the proposed lawsuit against drug manufacturers, if there is one.
The Health and Human Services Committee gave the thumbs up to the idea Monday night.
Now it goes to the full county board.
Lawyers representing Wisconsin counties would argue pharmaceutical companies knew how harmful opioids could be, but kept marketing them as safe because they were profitable.
Wood County has already joined the potential suit, which is similar to tobacco settlement lawsuits.
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Columbia County panel in favor of suing pharmaceutical industry
Oct 9, 2017 | Portage Daily Register (WI)
By Lyn Jerde
If the Wisconsin Counties Association ever sues the pharmaceutical industry to recover government bodies’ costs for addressing opioid addiction, Columbia County could join in the lawsuit, at no cost to the county.
The County Board’s Executive Committee on Monday voted unanimously in favor of a resolution to engage a Milwaukee-based law firm for the suit.
Corporation Counsel Joseph Ruf compared the proposed lawsuit — broached at the Counties Association’s annual conference, which ran from Sept. 24-26 at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in Wisconsin Dells — to a suit about 20 years ago against the tobacco industry, in which the industry and state governments reached a $206 billion settlement. Wisconsin sold its share of the settlement, $5.9 billion, in exchange for an immediate payout of $1.3 billion. About $450 million of that was used to balance the state budget.
The resolution requires the approval of the full County Board.
The Counties Association is asking all 72 counties to join the suit, and some already have, Ruf said.
Similar committees in Sauk and Dodge counties already have approved the measure, which still requires full board approval there.
The resolution calls for engaging the law firm of von Briesen and Roper, which is based in Milwaukee but has offices in several other Wisconsin cities.
The thinking behind suing the pharmaceutical industry, according to Ruf, is that the industry bears some responsibility for the widespread addiction to opium-based drugs. Many of these addictions start with prescription painkillers.PauseCurrent Time0:00/Duration Time0:00Stream TypeLIVELoaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00Fullscreen00:00Mute
“They made these drugs. They made lots of these drugs. They made money on these drugs,” Ruf said.
Some of the costs that counties bear as a direct result of the opioid addiction epidemic, he said, include law enforcement, jail operation and programs such as Columbia County’s medication-assisted treatment program and its new drug court.
Committee member Kirk Konkel of Portage had numerous questions, the first of which was addressed — whether the county would be responsible for paying the lawyers up front.
“I don’t know of any law firms that work for nothing,” he said.
Ruf said the von Briesen firm would handle the case on a contingency basis, with no participating counties paying any upfront fees. Then, the law firm would get 35 percent of whatever settlement or judgment results from the suit, plus expenses.
Whatever money is left would be divided among participating counties, Ruf said — but it’s highly likely that the division would not be even, and that metropolitan counties would get larger portions of the suit’s proceeds because they would be able to establish their drug-related costs are higher.
But even if the suit is eventually filed, it could be years, even decades, before it’s resolved — meaning, Ruf said, that no county will see any money from the pharmaceutical companies anytime soon.
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Dallas Lawyer Takes on the Drug Industry in a First-of-Its-Kind Federal Case
Oct 9, 2017 | Texas Lawyer (TX)
By John Council
Dallas lawyer Jeffrey Simonrecently filed a first of its kind lawsuit in a Texas federal court against several of the nation’s largest drug manufacturers. His client alleges they are complicit in North America’s addiction to prescription pain killers.
Simon, a partner in Simon Greenstone Panatier Bartlettrepresents an East Texas county that is bringing public nuisance, fraud and racketeering allegations against several major drug makers including Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He spoke with Texas Lawyer about how he found a client willing to take on the drug manufacturing industry, why he filed the case in the Eastern District of Texas and how he expects to prove up damages in what could be an extremely challenging case.Texas Lawyer: This is the first lawsuit of its kind filed in a federal court in Texas. Normally the Texas attorney general's office has represented counties and the state in litigation against big manufacturers. How did Upshur County become the firm’s client?
Jeffrey Simon: It’s not clear whether or not the State of Texas will file an action related to the pharmaceutical industry’s role in creating an opioid epidemic. Several states around the country have filed lawsuits making that allegation and it has been reported that the State of Texas has joined a working group to investigate the opioid pharmaceutical industry’s conduct. However, much of the financial damage done by the opioid epidemic as a result of the human misery that the opioid epidemic causes has been borne at the county level. Upshur County is one of those counties and it wanted to pursue rightful claims at the behest of its taxpayers, which have been bearing a financial burden from the opioid epidemic.TL: Your firm also represents six additional East Texas counties that plan to sue pharmaceutical companies for their alleged role in the country’s opioid painkiller epidemic. What’s your best argument that the defendant companies that make a federal regulated product that can only be prescribed by doctors had a role in the drug crisis?
Simon: I prefer to stick to the allegations as made in the complaint. But as a general rule, the fact that a drug is approved for some purpose does not give the drug manufacturer or distributor carte blanche to promote and market that drug in an irresponsible manner.
TL: U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of Marshall, who is famous for his handling of the nation’s largest patent docket, will preside over the case. Eastern District juries also have a reputation of being friendly to plaintiffs. Is it any coincidence you chose the Marshall Division as your venue for this litigation?
Simon: The reason that that case was filed in federal court in the Marshall division is because there is complete diversity in that the plaintiff is a Texas resident of Upshur County and the defendants are residents of other states, thus giving rise to federal court jurisdiction rather than state court. And Upshur County is in the Marshall division. That’s why the case was filed there.TL: How do you expect to prove damages in this case?
Simon: Again, damages are alleged in the complaint, but we will prove that there have been significant damages associated with the cost of health care that arises from opioid abuse. There are well-done published studies that prove that opioid abusers have four times as much health care costs as non-opioid users and that the cost of criminal justice drug enforcement has risen dramatically as the result of the opioid epidemic. The cost of treating opioid addicts is very high both in terms of treating overdoses and treated the addiction itself. [Studies estimate] that the annual cost of the opioid epidemic in the United States is over $70 billion dollars.TL: If you eventually prevail in this case, I would expect a demand that the defendants change their business practices. What would you ask of them?
Simon: Opioids, we allege, were marketed using techniques successfully employed for other less addictive, less potent prescription medicines that were inappropriate for drugs as powerful and as addictive as opioid drugs. We contend that opioid drugs should not have been marketed as being safe and effective and nonaddictive to treat chronic pain and that they should never be promoted in that way.
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Advocates: Declare opioid abuse issue a national emergency
Oct 10, 2017 | The Herald Dispatch (WV)
By Travis Crum
Some of the people working the front lines against the drug epidemic in Mingo County said they want the White House to declare opioid addiction a national emergency.
In August, President Donald Trump said he would declare a state of national emergency in response to the country's opioid crisis, a move that would give the federal government more power to combat addiction and overdoses.
So, far Trump has not made a formal declaration.
Mingo County has the fourth-highest overdose rate of any county in the nation.
For Josh Murphy, making the opioid crisis a national priority would help break down stigmas and open up more possibilities for Mingo County to address the problem.
Murphy is the prevention coordinator for the STOP Coalition, a grant-funded organization that works with children and young adults to stop the cycle of addiction in Mingo.
For this, he works first-hand with the next generation of Mingo residents.
"To hear a child tell you about a time they had to wake up their mom or dad - that's heartbreaking," Murphy said.
Prevention education would be nonexistent if it weren't for federal backing.
"This is about maintaining the future and fixing our generation now," he said.
If the White House declared a national state of emergency, along with a national health crisis, then the administration would have more powers to create additional drug treatment programs, make overdose-reversing drugs more available and waive healthcare regulations.
Any moves to fight the opioid epidemic would be welcome, said Angie Sparks, executive director of the STOP Coalition and the Crossroads recovery shelter. The demand for drug treatment services is only expected to rise.
The Crossroads facility holds 20 beds and is a long-term treatment home for women.
"We always have a waiting list," she said.
Any future work in fighting the epidemic needs to focus on babies, children and the reunification of families, she said.
Mingo County is dealing with more and more babies being born to mothers who have used illicit substances, and the county's services are being overrun. What's more, she said, families are being torn apart by the epidemic. There are not a lot of facilities that allow parents to be with their children.
"We have more grandparents raising their grandchildren than ever before," Sparks said.
At the Anchor Point treatment facility in Delbarton, there is always a month-long waiting list to get one of the 24 beds. The program treats 12 men and 12 women in separate facilities for short-term treatment.
A majority of the people the facility sees are being are being treated with insurance covered by the Affordable Care Act, said Jill Click, Anchor Point program manager.
"If they would repeal Obamacare, then most of people we serve would not be able to get services," she said.
Last month, First Lady Melania Trump met at the White House with families affected by the opioid crisis. She heard from the U.S. Center for Disease Control that 91 Americans die every day from opioid-related overdoses, according to the Associated Press.
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Oct 10, 2017 | WNBC (NBC)
By New York, NY
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992680?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565
Rough Transcript: we expect to learn more about a lawsuit filed by the city of newark against several opioid manufacturers. the lawsuit accuses people of deceptive practices. among the companies being targeted the maker of the painkiller oxycontin.
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Good Morning East Texas at 5 AM
Oct 10, 2017 | KLTV (ABC)
By Tyler, TX
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992685?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565
Rough Transcript: it's been ten days since upshur county entered a lawsuit against several pharmaceutical companies for their alleged role in the ongoing opioid epidemic. monday we sat down with a couple of doctors who describe what the epidemic has been like in the past few years ... they say it's part of their regular job now to be on the lookout for people trying to dupe them into prescribing opioids. williamson: "an we have patients 6:20 AMcome in who state that they're from out of town and that they lost their prescription and that their doctor won't answer their calls carter: you don't want to not treat people that are hurting so it becomes very tricky trying to do the right thing. certain red flags and warning signs come up on certain patients and we have to tell them no." erika smith county hired two law firms last week and is considering joining the case with upshur county as a plaintiff. erika back pain is categorized as chronic when it lasts three months or longer. and while surgery may be necessary, in some cases, doctors at john's hopkins say there are alternatives. with physical therapy patients learn better posture, gain flexibility and core strength, all of which helps their condition improve. yoga and meditation can help fight the emotional turmoil that comes with coping with chronic back pain. also, doctors suggest giving up the smoking. john hopkins say nicotine has been know to make pain worse and slow down the healing proces.
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Oct 10, 2017 | KWES (NBC)
By Odessa, TX
Video Link :http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29992696?token=539c8371-261a-45bb-81d3-8cca6b9b5565
Rough Transcript: some texas counties are suing pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis.... those companies are being accused of using deceptive marketing to downplay opioids... newswest 9 s jolina okazaki tells you if counties here will also get involved... they re calling it an "opioid epidemic." from brand names lik oxycontin or vicodin, several pharmeceutical companies like purdue pharma and abbott laboratories are getting sued by several states, even counties in texas. upshur county in east texas has filed a lawsuit, with claims that the companies are downplaying the dangers of opioids in their marketing tactics. a problem they say is what s leading to opioid addiction in the us. "each entity has massive cost associated with healthcare, with law enforcement, with jails. by promising they are not addictive, that they re safe for chronic pain." at least six other texas counties are 7:03 PMexpected to follow suit, but not midland county. county officials tell me it s not within their discretion to file a lawsuit against a company, when the problem doesn t fall on them, but actually, the user. "i think it s foolish why are you going after a pharmesuetical company? i mean, they just make the stuff. again, it falls back on the person. it s the people that are abusing it. the drug is for a good reason and for people in dire need of it. it s an answer to a prayer. people abuse it. when you abuse it, you ll have people die, hooked on it and can t get off of it. it s a hard situation." both ector and midland county say there hasn t been a problem with opioid usage anyway. since the drugs that are mostly abused in both counties are either meth, marijuana and cocaine. texas attorney general ken paxton is investigating the industry with other attorneys general to serve subpoenas on eight pharmaceutical companies. paxton says the investigation will help them determine the appropriate course of action to take.
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