Preview Newsletter
Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report - 12/15/2017
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New drug law makes it ‘harder for us to do our jobs,’ former DEA officials say
Dec 15, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Scott Higham & Lenny Bernstein
A new law supported by opioid distributors and manufacturers is making it increasingly difficult to hold companies accountable when they run afoul of the nation’s drug laws, according to recently retired Drug Enforcement Administration investigators on the front lines of the war against opioids. -
60 Minutes and The Washington Post follow up on joint investigation into the opioid epidemic (VIDEO)
| CBS News
The biggest case the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration ever built against a drug company was settled far too leniently, say two DEA whistleblowers who made the case. A retired special agent and a DEA investigator appear in a follow-up to the impactful joint investigation on the opioid epidemic reported in October by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post. The inside story of the DEA's case against McKesson, the largest drug distributor in the U.S., by 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker, producers Ira Rosen and Sam Hornblower, and The Washington Post's Investigative Reporters Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein, will appear Sunday, Dec. 15 in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7:00 p.m. PT. Preview Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-and-the-washington-post-follow-up-on-joint-investigation-into-the-opioid-epidemic/ -
Second Arkansas group files suit against opioid manufacturers
Dec 14, 2017 | KATV (AR)
By Scott Carroll & Janelle Lilley
The Association of Arkansas Counties on Thursday afternoon became the second statewide group to file a federal lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors over how the companies market and sell the drugs. -
CORRECTED: Arkansas Municipal League plans to re-file lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | Arkansas Times (AR)
By David Ramsey
The Arkansas Municipal League filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against a number of major distributors and manufacturers of prescription opioids in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. -
Rockingham County sues major opioid manufacturers, distributors
Dec 15, 2017 | Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
By Joe Dexter
Rockingham County this week joined several other N.C. counties, including Yadkin, in suing major opioid distributors and manufacturers in federal court over allegations of unlawful distribution of opioids and failure to report and prevent suspicious orders. -
Baton Rouge hires law firm, looks to join cities suing over cost of dealing with opioid crisis
Dec 14, 2017 | The Advocate (LA)
By Andrea Gallo
Baton Rouge is expected to join a growing number of cities filing lawsuits against companies that distribute prescription opioids nationwide, as addictions reach crisis levels and local governments face escalating costs of dealing with the problem. -
Washington to sue big pharma over opioid crisis
Dec 14, 2017 | Chipley Paper (FL)
By Jacqueline Bostick
Washington County commissioners aim to sue big pharma distributors and manufacturers, joining a number of other counties and cities in Northwest Florida. -
City of Greenville, Houston County file lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | WSFA (AL)
By Rosanna Smith
Lawyers from Beasley Allen are representing the city of Greenville and Houston County in lawsuits filed against opioid manufacturers. -
Fayette commissioners approve lawsuit to recoup opioid costs
Dec 14, 2017 | Herald Standard (PA)
By Mike Tony
Fayette County’s commissioners voted Thursday to authorize filing a lawsuit seeking to recover costs incurred by the county due to its rampant opioid abuse. -
York County sues opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | Tribune - Review (PA)
By Staff
Add York County to the list of Pennsylvania governments hoping to recoup some of the money they've spent on the opioid epidemic. -
Lacey Joins Fight Against Drug Companies
Dec 15, 2017 | New Jersey Online (NJ)
By Kimerly Bosco
Lacey Township is joining the fight against pharmaceutical companies in the wake of the heroin and opioid epidemic in New Jersey, according to officials at a recent township meeting. -
Greenfield sues big pharma over opioids
Dec 15, 2017 | Greenfield Recorder (MA)
By Joshua Solomon
Greenfield has become the first community in the state to file a lawsuit against opioid distributors and manufacturers, joining dozens of other cities and towns across the country that are looking for financial reparations for the ongoing addiction epidemic. -
Bloomington, 2 Indiana counties to join opioid lawsuit
Dec 14, 2017 | Associated Press
By Staff
Officials of two Indiana counties and one city are joining a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and distributors for their alleged role in fueling the opioid abuse crisis. -
Hoping to recover soaring costs, Allen County government likely to sue opioid makers
Dec 15, 2017 | News-Sentinel (IN)
By Kevin Leninger
With an estimated 40,000 people in Allen County abusing opiods, local officials appear ready to join a growing legal effort to make drug manufacturers pay for the cost of courts, incarceration, treatment and other related problems. -
City files suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors
Dec 15, 2017 | The Courier-Times (IN)
By Kevin Green
The City of New Castle is joining Indianapolis and several other Hoosier cities in filing a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors. -
Jefferson County files opioid lawsuit
Dec 15, 2017 | WTRF (WV)
By Brooke Chaplain
A lawsuit against the manufacturers of opioid prescription painkillers. -
Harris County confronts growing opioid crisis by suing several parties who allegedly put profits over patients
Dec 14, 2017 | Rare Houston (TX)
By Danielle Husband
As the nation faces an ongoing opioid crisis, Houston is taking action: -
Stop Gouging Americans, Big Pharma (EDITORIAL)
Dec 14, 2017 | Clare County Review (MI)
By Mike Wilcox
A couple of months ago I called out Big Pharma for flooding the market with opioids and the adverse effect they were having on society. Many experts blame Big Pharma for starting and perpetuating the Opioid crisis by offering unscrupulous doctors thousands of pain pills so they in turn could oversell them to patients whether they needed them or not. -
Pharmaceutical Sales in the Era of the Opioid Crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | Medreps
By Staff
The ongoing opioid crisis continues to plague the pharmaceutical sales industry with unique challenges. -
These Pharmaceutical Companies Are Making a Killing Off the Opioid Crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | The Nation
By Daniel Denvir
On September 16, 2014, 25-year-old Matthew Comfort walked into his mother’s bathroom in the working-class Philadelphia suburb of Bensalem, shot up heroin and died from an overdose. His mother, Liz Fox, was working at home that day to keep an eye on her son, who had struggled with addiction for three years, including spending time homeless on the streets of Kensington, once the heart of the city’s manufacturing industry and today its epicenter for injection drug use. He had recently been released from jail, where he had served time for theft he had committed to supply his habit. At his mom’s house, the two had searched for an inpatient rehab slot with no success. Before he left jail, Fox had asked that her son be sent directly to rehab. She received no response. -
Drugwatch Report Shows Big Pharma Created Opioid Crisis (PRESS RELEASE)
Dec 15, 2017 | Drugwatch
Not long ago, prescription opioids were sparingly dispensed in the United States. -
Going after opioid manufacturers, distributors in court may help with crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | Medical Press
By Laurel Thomas
As the health care community moves on multiple fronts to address the opioid crisis, one area that holds promise is in litigation against those who manufacture and distribute prescription opioid drugs, according to a University of Michigan researcher. -
Doctors Make Big Money Selling You Pills: Corporations Pay The Bonuses – America’s Lawyer (VIDEO)
Dec 15, 2017 | Ring of Fire Network
By Mike Papantonio
Every day, patients in the United States put their lives in the hands of doctors, but sometimes that prescription that you take to the pharmacy after visiting your doctor wasn’t written because the doctor really believes it’s the best treatment for you. Sometimes, it was given to you because the doctor is getting incentives from the drugmaker to write you that prescription. In recent years, the problem of big pharma kickbacks has finally received the level of attention that it deserves. News stories have emerged showing that doctors are being given financial compensation, luxury vacations, and expensive meals all paid for by drug companies in exchange for medical professionals writing prescriptions for their medications instead of competitive medicine. VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=-PMj8xCv0Qw -
White House tamps down expectations of additional opioid funding this year
Dec 14, 2017 | STAT News
By Lev Facher
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Thursday told reporters she was unsure when Congress would fund new initiatives specific to addressing the opioid crisis. -
On opioids, the White House keeps talking and planning — but not doing anything of significance (EDITORIAL)
Dec 15, 2017 | Vox
By German Lopez
The opioid epidemic is supposed to be an issue that President Donald Trump cares about, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said, “on an emotional, just-get-it-done level.” And Trump talked a big game about confronting the crisis on the campaign trail, promising more money for addiction treatment and prevention efforts. -
40/29 News Sunrise
Dec 15, 2017 | KHBS (ABC)
By Ft. Smith, AR
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438177?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
WTVY News 4 This Morning
Dec 15, 2017 | WTVY (CBS)
By Dothan, AL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438185?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
Eyewitness News Daybreak 5:00
Dec 15, 2017 | WSOC (ABC)
By Charlotte, NC
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438246?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
7 News at 5am
Dec 15, 2017 | WRTF (CBS)
By Wheeling, WV
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438251?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
Eyewitness News Sunrise at 4:30
Dec 15, 2017 | WTHR (NBC)
By Indianapolis (IN)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438255?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
KOAM News at Ten
Dec 14, 2017 | KOAM (CBS)
By Joplin, MO
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438261?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
WXII 12 News at 6
Dec 14, 2017 | WXII (NBC)
By Greensboro, NC
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438278?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
Channel 7 News at 6
Dec 15, 2017 | KATV (ABC)
By Little Rock, AR
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438263?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
KOLO 8 Midday at 11am
Dec 14, 2017 | KOLO (NBC)
By Reno, NV
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438292?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01 -
News 8 at Noon
Dec 14, 2017 | WKBT (CBS)
By La Crosse, WI
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438299?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
CBS 60 Minutes Follow-up
Southeast (AR, NC, LA, FL, AL)
Northeast (PA, NJ, MA)
Midwest (IN, WV)
Southwest (TX)
Commentary and FYIs
Broadcast Media Coverage
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New drug law makes it ‘harder for us to do our jobs,’ former DEA officials say
Dec 15, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Scott Higham & Lenny Bernstein
A new law supported by opioid distributors and manufacturers is making it increasingly difficult to hold companies accountable when they run afoul of the nation’s drug laws, according to recently retired Drug Enforcement Administration investigators on the front lines of the war against opioids.
They join a chorus of voices calling for changes to the law that includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 44 state attorneys general and the head of the DEA office that regulates pharmaceuticals.
The field investigators said the new law is hurting efforts to halt suspicious shipments of prescription pain pills and slowing the agency’s investigative efforts. Morale within the ranks of the DEA’s field divisions has plummeted, they said in interviews with The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” for a joint investigation that will be published and broadcast Sunday.
“The law makes it much harder for us to do our jobs,” said James Rafalski, a DEA investigator who retired in June after a 39-year career in law enforcement, the last 13 years with the agency.
The Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016 was pushed through Congress by a small band of lawmakers backed by a powerful array of drug companies. The law has undermined the DEA’s most potent tools in the war against the opioid epidemic, according to agency investigators, agents, lawyers and the DEA’s chief administrative law judge.
The legislation was the subject of a joint investigation by The Post and “60 Minutes” in October. On Sunday, a follow-up investigation will examine the obstacles investigators encountered during the biggest case the DEA has ever pursued against a drug distributor.
The law was sponsored by Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) in the House. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA in the Senate.
After the October report, Marino withdrew his nomination to become drug czar, which would have put him in charge of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he was “dubious” about the law when he was a senator and has since come the conclusion that it should be changed. Forty-four state attorneys general, as well as Democratic lawmakers in Congress, have called for its repeal.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, the head of the DEA office that regulates the pharmaceutical industry said the law has made enforcement more difficult in urgent circumstances and should be revised.
“The DEA, along with the Department of Justice, believes that has to change,” said Demetra Ashley, acting assistant administrator in charge of the agency’s Diversion Control Division.
John Parker, a spokesman for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, the leading industry group for drug distributors, said the law has not hampered DEA’s enforcement actions, which he pointed out had fallen before the law was enacted. Parker said the DEA has other tools to combat the epidemic, including controlling quotas for opioid production, punishing pharmacists and doctors, and tracking drug distribution data.
“The DEA is the only entity that has the full picture and scope of controlled substances across the supply chain,” Parker said.
The Post has previously reported that DEA enforcement actions began dropping in 2013 after agency attorneys began requiring higher standards of proof to bring cases, as the DEA pursued a path of greater cooperation with industry.
DEA investigators and agents said in recent interviews with The Post and “60 Minutes” that the law has further hobbled their efforts at the height of the prescription opioid epidemic, which claimed nearly 200,000 lives between 2000 and 2016.
Previously, the agency had broad authority to freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community in an action called an immediate suspension. Under the new law, the DEA must demonstrate that a company’s actions represent “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat,” a much higher bar. The law also allows companies to submit “corrective action plans” before the DEA can sanction them.
“This Marino-Hatch bill is outrageous,” said Jim Geldhof, a DEA program manager who retired in 2015 after 43 years with the DEA. “It basically takes any kind of action DEA was going to do with a distributor or manufacturer as far as an immediate suspension off the table. And then the other part of that really infuriates me is that corrective action plan.”
Geldhof now works as a consultant to lawyers suing drug companies over the opioid crisis.
Supporters of the new law defend it as a means of protecting patients while not damaging the DEA.
“This was an effort to ensure that DEA’s praiseworthy efforts to stem abuse don’t end up hurting legitimate patients,” Hatch said during Tuesday’s Senate hearing. He noted that the law was an effort “to provide clearer guidance to supply chain members and to encourage greater cooperation between DEA and the registrant community.”
Marino defended the law in a statement issued Tuesday.
“Throughout the entire process my office and Senator Hatch’s office worked closely with the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement [Administration] to find acceptable language,” he wrote. “When the legislation was finalized in the Senate, both the DOJ and the DEA had signed off on the final language. After the legislation was passed, there was no objection by the White House or any Agency and the bill was signed into law.”
DEA investigators and agents said Hatch is misinformed.
“I could not disagree more,” said David Schiller, who recently retired as the DEA’s assistant special agent in charge of the Denver division after a 30-year career. “If somebody makes that statement, they don’t have all the facts.”
Helen Kaupang, who was a DEA investigator and supervisor for 29 years before she retired in September, said the law has made it more difficult to bring cases against companies suspected of violating the nation’s drugs laws. She called the provision that permits companies to submit corrective plans a “get out of jail free card” because those plans delay the DEA from taking action against companies and allow them to continue to dispense drugs.
“I had young investigators that were enthusiastic. They were excited. They wanted to turn the world upside down,” Kaupang said.
Since the passage of the law, she said, morale has plummeted.
“It’s a very sad state of affairs,” she said.
The October investigative report revealed that an early version of the law was written by a drug company lawyer who once worked at the DEA, according to a government email. The law was part of a multifaceted industry campaign to blunt enforcement efforts against drug companies.
Congress approved the bill by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure that does not require a recorded vote. President Obama signed it into law in April 2016. Former administration officials said afterward that the White House was unaware of the bill’s import. A senior DEA official said the bill was “completely unnecessary” and “would have passed with us or without us.”
Rafalski, the recently retired DEA investigator, said he was particularly incensed by the provision of the law that allows a company suspected of wrongdoing to submit a corrective action plan before it can be sanctioned. He is now working as a consultant to lawyers suing drug companies.
In August 2016, after the law took effect, Rafalski was examining the documents of a drug company that was failing to properly monitor the controlled substances it handled.
On the third day of a scheduled three-week audit, the company notified Rafalski that it had filed a corrective action plan.
Rafalski said a less-experienced or aggressive investigator might have backed off at that point. But he said he persisted and demanded to see the company’s records anyway. As he continued to conduct his audit, he said company officials realized that they would not be able to defend the number of violations he had found. The company voluntarily surrendered its DEA registration to handle controlled substances, he said.
“The attitude by investigators at the field level is there is no basis for this law,” he said.
Democratic members of Congress, led by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), have called for repealing the legislation. So far, no Republican senators have signed on.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.), who is co-sponsoring the repeal bill, said members of Congress were fooled by the legislation. He said it was “camouflaged” by carefully crafted legal language and carried a misleading title that promised access to drugs for patients who truly need them and tougher drug enforcement efforts against those who violate the law.
Manchin, whose state suffers from the highest prescription drug overdose rate in the nation, said he and his colleagues relied on the word of a handful of lawmakers that the legislation was noncontroversial and should be quickly passed by unanimous consent.
“When you get duped as we did, then it’s our responsibility to fix it immediately,” Manchin said. “We’re going to overturn that bill. It has to be overturned. The power has to be back to the DEA. The DEA has to be held responsible for the job they’re supposed to do, and we’ve got to make sure that’s done and done immediately. There shouldn’t be any hesitation.”
Two days after The Post/“60 Minutes” report, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) confronted Elizabeth Gallenagh, general counsel and senior vice president for government affairs at the Healthcare Distribution Alliance. The alliance has said the law does not undermine the DEA’s enforcement powers.
Hassan questioned Gallenagh about a law review article written by Chief DEA Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II that was sharply critical of the Marino-Hatch bill.
“The point is that your organization — which lobbied aggressively for this law last year — claimed that it does not decrease the DEA’s enforcement against distributors,” she told Gallenagh during an Oct. 17 congressional hearing. “The DEA chief administrative law judge says you’re wrong — that the law completely eliminates the DEA’s ability to take certain enforcement actions. It’s his job to interpret the law. So is the judge wrong? Or was your organization’s statement misleading?”
“I believe that the judge’s statement was misleading,” Gallenagh said. “And I stand behind our organization’s statement.”
Hassan said in a recent interview that she was stunned to hear one of the nation’s most influential drug industry groups attack the integrity of the DEA’s chief judge.
“She accused the administrative law judge of misleading the public, of misleading us. And I thought that was astounding,” Hassan said. “What I am looking for from the pharmaceutical industry is a true recognition that their product has fueled an addiction that is killing people and that they have an actual responsibility to do something about it. And I’m not seeing it.”
Responding on behalf of Gallenagh, Parker pointed to a recent comment by Ashley, the DEA diversion chief, that agency employees have not been “hamstrung in a manner that we cannot continue to do our jobs.”
Parker added that the alliance “would welcome the opportunity to meet with Sen. Hassan to discuss the law and its effect on enforcement in greater detail.”
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60 Minutes and The Washington Post follow up on joint investigation into the opioid epidemic (VIDEO)
| CBS News
The biggest case the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration ever built against a drug company was settled far too leniently, say two DEA whistleblowers who made the case. A retired special agent and a DEA investigator appear in a follow-up to the impactful joint investigation on the opioid epidemic reported in October by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post. The inside story of the DEA's case against McKesson, the largest drug distributor in the U.S., by 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker, producers Ira Rosen and Sam Hornblower, and The Washington Post's Investigative Reporters Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein, will appear Sunday, Dec. 15 in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7:00 p.m. PT.
The 60 Minutes segment includes interviews with retired DEA Agent David Schiller, who led the team that made the case, and retired DEA Agent Helen Kaupang, who worked on it. They both are speaking for the first time.
60 Minutes and The Washington Post first reported in October how the DEA's efforts to crack down on the opioid epidemic were derailed as the number of opioid drug deaths increased. In its wake, Rep. Tom Marino (R. PA) withdrew his name from consideration as America's drug czar. A number of Democrats and at least one Republican called for modification or outright repeal of the law Marino shepherded through Congress, which undercuts the DEA's ability to take action against the drug industry. The law and how it was passed was a central tenet of the first story in the joint investigation.
Whitaker and Bernstein appeared today on CBS this Morning to talk about their latest findings. Watch the 60 Minutes clip. Preview The Post's video and sign up to have the story delivered to your inbox: wapo.st/DEA
Jeff Fager is the executive producer of 60 MINUTES and Martin Baron is the executive editor of The Washington Post.
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Second Arkansas group files suit against opioid manufacturers
Dec 14, 2017 | KATV (AR)
By Scott Carroll & Janelle Lilley
The Association of Arkansas Counties on Thursday afternoon became the second statewide group to file a federal lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors over how the companies market and sell the drugs.
The group joins the Arkansas Municipal League in suing the companies. Both organizations have accused the companies of downplaying the risks of opioids, particularly addiction, and exaggerating the benefits of the drugs.
"They used false data and bad information to market to doctors that opioids were now safe for long-term treatment," said AAC Executive Director Chris Villines.
The groups claim those practices have created a public health crisis in Arkansas and across the country that has led to physical harm and financial ruin for countless opioid users.
"For years, we've been paying local tax money to help handle overcrowded jails, overcrowded hospitals, put more deputies on the streets, so it's really stretched the means of these counties to razor-thin layers," Villines said.
Thirteen opioid manufacturers and distributors are listed as defendants in the lawsuits. Among the companies are Johnson & Johnson; Purdue Pharma; McKesson Corporation; Cardinal Health; Belgium-based Janssen Pharmaceuticals Ireland-based Activis Pharma.
In addition to the AAC's lawsuit in federal court, Villines said Arkansas' 75 counties will each file suit in their respective circuit court and will seek punitive damages specific to their county. He said AAC has hired a law firm from Alabama with experience in these cases to help the counties manage the lawsuits.
The suit says drug manufacturers "falsely and misleadingly" marketed opioids and persuaded doctors to over-prescribe the drugs through "front groups," seemingly independent medical organizations that were actually paid by the drug-makers, and a small circle of influential and pro-opioid doctors known as "key opinion leaders.”
The Arkansas Municipal League compared the companies’ tactics to those of tobacco companies. The group, which represents more than 400 cities and towns in Arkansas, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas earlier this week. It voluntarily dismissed, or withdrew, that lawsuit on Wednesday for a technical reason, but the municipal league plans to re-file the lawsuit in federal court.
The Healthcare Distribution Alliance, a national group that represents some of the distributors named as defendants, said in a statement Thursday that the companies are “deeply engaged in the issue and are taking our own steps to be part of the solution – but we aren’t willing to be scapegoats.”
“We don’t make medicines, market medicines, prescribe medicines, or dispense them to consumers,” John Parker, the group’s senior vice president, said in the statement. “Given our role, the idea that distributors are solely responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and how it is regulated.”
Drug-makers have denied wrongdoing in similar lawsuits.
Chicago, Seattle and Indianapolis are among the municipalities that have sued opioid manufacturers in recent years, according to reports.
Arkansas has the second-highest opioid prescription rate in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency reported the rate to be 114.6 opioid prescriptions per 100 people. The national average is 66.5 prescriptions per 100 people.
Villines said the drugs have been over-prescribed.
"They went way beyond what a normal opioid prescription had been prior to that and started marketing, I've heard from some of our coroners, up to 90-day supplies of opioids have been given out," he said. "And the research that we've seen shows that you can be addicted to opioids in as little as five days."
There were about 108 opioid-related deaths in Arkansas last year, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.
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CORRECTED: Arkansas Municipal League plans to re-file lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | Arkansas Times (AR)
By David Ramsey
The Arkansas Municipal League filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against a number of major distributors and manufacturers of prescription opioids in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
IMPORTANT ADDITION: But on Wednesday, the plaintiffs gave notice of their voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit without prejudice, which means the suit could be brought again. Scott Carroll at KATV reports that the lawsuit was withdrawn for a technical reason, but the Municipal League plans to re-file it. On Friday morning, the D-G reported that the group needs additional time to add groups to its coalition and will re-filed early next month.
From earlier:
The lawsuit alleges that the 13 pharmaceutical companies listed as defendants deliberately misled the public and medical providers about the dangers of opioids, leading to a public health catastrophe.
The named defendants are Purdue Pharma; the Purdue Frederick Company; Cephalon; Pharmaceuticals USA; Janssen Pharmacueticals; Johnson & Johnson; Endo Health; Watson Laboratories; Acta Vis Pharma; Acta Vis; AmericsourceBergen Drug Corporation; Cardinal Health; and McKesson Corporation.
The lawsuit alleges that these companies deployed "a marketing scheme designed to persuade doctors and patients that opioids can and should be used for chronic pain, a far broader group of patients much more likely to become addicted and suffer other adverse effects from the long-term use of opioids." This scheme ("borrowing from Big Tobacco's playbook"), the suit alleges, began around twenty years ago and continues today:In connection with this scheme, each Defendant spent, and continues to spend, millions of dollars on promotional activities and materials that falsely deny or trivialize the risks of opioids while overstating the benefits of using them for chronic pain. As to the risks, Defendants falsely and misleadingly, and contrary to the language of their drugs' labels: (1) downplayed the serious risk of addiction; (2) promoted the concept of "pseudoaddiction" and thus advocated that the signs of addiction should be treated with more opioids; (3) exaggerated the effectiveness of screening tools in preventing addiction; ( 4) claimed that opioid dependence and withdrawal are easily managed; (5) denied the risks of higher opioid dosages; and ( 6) exaggerated the effectiveness of "abuse-deterrent" opioid formulations to prevent abuse and addiction. Conversely, Defendants also falsely touted the benefits of long-term opioid use, including the supposed ability of opioids to improve function and quality of life, even though there was no "good evidence" to support Defendants' claims.
And the monstrous results of this scheme:
This epidemic, fueled by opioids lawfully prescribed by doctors, has resulted in a flood of prescription opioids available for illicit use or sale (the supply), and a population of patients physically and psychologically dependent on them (the demand). And when those patients can no longer afford or legitimately obtain opioids, they often turn to the street to buy prescription opioids or even heroin. Arkansas is now awash in opioids and engulfed in a public health crisis the likes of which have been seen before.Arkansas has the second-highest opioid prescription rate in the nation. Around 100 lawsuits have been filed across the nation against opioid companies by cities, counties and states, which may eventually be grouped together; the Municipal League's approach is somewhat unique by representing a coalition of multiple municipalities.
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages for the costs of excessive opioid prescriptions and notes "tens of millions more on costs directly attributable to the flood of opioids Defendants unleashed on the State, including costs for addiction treatment and the treatment of babies born addicted to opioids." -
Rockingham County sues major opioid manufacturers, distributors
Dec 15, 2017 | Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
By Joe Dexter
Rockingham County this week joined several other N.C. counties, including Yadkin, in suing major opioid distributors and manufacturers in federal court over allegations of unlawful distribution of opioids and failure to report and prevent suspicious orders.
The Rockingham County Board of Commissioners announced the lawsuit late Wednesday morning during a press conference. The suit was filed Tuesday night in Greensboro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
The 165-page document, filed by Winston-Salem lawyer Garry Whitaker, seeks civil action to, “eliminate the hazard to public health and safety caused by the opioid epidemic, to abate the nuisance caused.”
The county seeks to recoup the amount of money it has spent because of the distributor’s and manufacturers’ “false, deceptive and unfair marketing and/or unlawful diversion of prescription opioids,” according to the suit.
The list of 23 defendants includes such major distributors as AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and Cardinal Health and opioid manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Allergan.
According to the complaint, the opioid epidemic has been “particularly devastating” in Rockingham County.
From 1999 to 2007, the county averaged a total of 7.33 deaths per year, with a total of 66 opiate-related deaths, according to the suit. That average increased to 11.2 deaths per year with total deaths of 101 from 2008 through 2016.
Throughout most of 2017, Rockingham County EMS has responded to 109 opioid-related overdoses resulting in 45 deaths countywide.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 131.9 opioid prescriptions were dispensed per 100 people in 2016 in Rockingham County. That’s about double the national average of 66.5, according to the civil filing.
The suit also alleges manufacturers’ marketing materials “falsely deny or trivialize the risk of opioids, while overstating the benefits of using them for chronic pain.”
Officials contend that the lawsuit will also help abate the cost of the epidemic that the county commissioners deemed a public nuisance on Dec. 4, saying it has led to a major increase in foster care, law enforcement and public safety costs.
Unintentional drug overdoses in Rockingham County cost $1.3 billion in 2015 and an estimated $2.1 billion in 2016, according to Whitaker.
“Our plan is to use any money as recovery for education and for any programs available at that time to combat that problem,” commissioners Chairman Kevin Berger said during the news conference.
“We’re trying to recover this money to help our citizens deal with the opioid crisis.”
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Baton Rouge hires law firm, looks to join cities suing over cost of dealing with opioid crisis
Dec 14, 2017 | The Advocate (LA)
By Andrea Gallo
Baton Rouge is expected to join a growing number of cities filing lawsuits against companies that distribute prescription opioids nationwide, as addictions reach crisis levels and local governments face escalating costs of dealing with the problem.
East Baton Rouge Metro Council members agreed this week to hire national law firm Baron and Bud to represent the city-parish and to prosecute "a claim for public nuisance and damages against those in the chain of distribution of prescription opiates." The attorneys will be paid from money awarded to the city-parish if the lawsuit is successful.
Baron and Budd has already filed similar lawsuits over the past few months representing the cities of Cincinnati, Birmingham and Louisville. The law firm is headquartered in Dallas and has a Baton Rouge office, but council members debated whether they should try harder to give other law firms the chance to represent the city-parish in the lawsuit.
Baton Rouge attorney Chris Whittington implored council members to consider other law firms. He said he is affiliated with Napoli Shkolnik, which is headquartered in New York City and is also representing other cities in similar opioid-related lawsuits.
Whittington said his firm could save the city-parish "hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Councilman Buddy Amoroso questioned whether the city-parish should hold a public forum where law firms could deliver their pitches for the opioid litigation. But Parish Attorney Lea Anne Batson said her office already sent council members all of the proposals from law firms that reached out to her office, and that discussions about legal strategy had already taken place privately.
Council members ended up approving the agreement with Baron and Budd.
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Washington to sue big pharma over opioid crisis
Dec 14, 2017 | Chipley Paper (FL)
By Jacqueline Bostick
Washington County commissioners aim to sue big pharma distributors and manufacturers, joining a number of other counties and cities in Northwest Florida.
The move comes after Panama City law firms Perry & Young and Bryant & Higby pitched the case to commissioners at a recent meeting. At 124.7 prescriptions per 100 people in the 2016 year, state data shows that Washington County leads the state in opioid prescribing rates.
“I am confident our commissioners will move forward with this,” Commissioner Tray Hawkins said, speaking of the suit and the implications of the local opioid crisis, Thursday afternoon. “It’s something that has touched so many families in Washington County.”
“My vote would be to move forward with it,” he added.
In response to the epidemic, City of Panama City in Bay County, as well as, Bay County Board of Commissioners, will file lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors, with the intent to use the money from the suit to deal with the effects of the epidemic.
Jackson County has also been approached.
Perry & Young and Byrant & Higby are looking to both Washington and Holmes counties governing bodies to do the same.
“The objective is to procure or get resources and bring them back to the community so that they can deal with cleaning up the mess created by the opioid distribution and manufacturing” companies, said Cliff Higby with Byrant & Higby.
“It’s borderline shocking to hear how strained their resources are,” he later added.
Although, he said, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to manage the opioid crisis in both Washington and Holmes is common “throughout the country,” both counties “are being stressed financially by the epidemic.”
How stressed? Washington spent upwards of about $750,000 fighting the epidemic, according to county officials, with half a million on law enforcement.
“Last year we committed (an estimated) $750,000 used to fight the opioid addiction,” Hawkins said. “We are committed to give our sheriff what he needs” to manage the growing issue. “With this collective effort -- with whichever law firm we use -- we’re excited of what we can do to help combat and alleviate the opioid epidemic in Washington County.”
Attorney Larry Perry from Perry & Young was clear that the crisis is multifaceted, having many “tentacles,” he said, including the social, criminal and interdiction elements of it. The funds from the suit would support the county for the past and future; the future “because once you slow down on the number of opioids that are prescribed ... it’s going to take a while for that spigot to run dry.”
“It’s going to be a number of years before this, kind of, clears the system,” Perry said.
He anticipated the suit could bring the county “in the multiple millions of dollars” to manage the crisis caused by the fray, which, according to officials, resulted from the over-prescribing of opioids.
Although a vote to decide whether to pursue the lawsuit has yet to happen, Commissioner Hawkins said commissioners are planning meet individually with attorneys from both law firms. And, following a workshop, have a vote by January.
“We’re not going into this blindsided, we’re going to vet each attorney,” he said. The county will go with “the one that’s best fit for our community and our needs.”
Both firms are great, he noted.
Bay County Board of Commissioners Attorney Don Banks recommended the board pick Bryant and Higby. The consortium is responsible for recommending a number of legal teams that have filed a combined 110 suits out of 180 filed over recent years across the country.
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City of Greenville, Houston County file lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | WSFA (AL)
By Rosanna Smith
Lawyers from Beasley Allen are representing the city of Greenville and Houston County in lawsuits filed against opioid manufacturers.
The complaints allege the marketing of these drugs contributed to the creation of the opioid epidemic, a public health and safety crisis. As a result of responding to the opioid crisis within its communities, the city of Greenville and Houston County claim they’ve sustained economic damages and continue to incur a significant financial burden.
"These manufacturers aggressively pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, turning patients into addicts for their own corporate profits. The manufacture and distribution of these dangerous drugs, along with the intentional misrepresentation to doctors and the public about their risks, breached these companies' legal duties under federal and state law. Rather than investigate suspicious orders of prescription opiates, they simply pocketed the profits at the expense of the public,” said Rhon Jones.
Economic damages resulting from the opioid epidemic include costs for providing medical care, therapeutic care and treatments for patients suffering from opioid-related addiction or disease, including overdoes and deaths; costs for providing counseling and rehabilitation services; costs for treating infants born with opioid-related medical conditions; public safety and law enforcement expenses; and care for children whose parents suffer from opioid-related disability or incapacitation.
"It is a nuisance and a dangerous thing that cost not only the city but also the other citizens because of the terrible affects the need for the drugs has,” said Richard Hartley, Greenville City Attorney.
At first glance leaders from Greenville and Houston County are pleased with the action taken.
"The opioid crisis is real and impacts our city. We hope this lawsuit will help us to deal with all of the burdens that have been imposed on us,” said Dexter McLendon, Mayor of Greenville.
"The opioid crisis is a very real problem in our county. We want to build awareness of the problem and create a means to help those impacted," said Mark Culver, Chairman of the Houston County Commission.
Defendants include Purdue Pharm a L.P.; Purdue Pharma, Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company, Inc.; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, LTD.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.; Cephalon, Inc.; Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. n/k/a Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc. n/k/a Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Noramco, Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Allergan PLC f/k/a Actavis PLS; Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. n/k/a Actavis, Inc.; Watson Laboratories, Inc.; Actavis, LLC; Actavis Pharm a, Inc. f/k/a Watson Pharma, Inc.; Mallinckrodt plc; Mallinckrodt LLC; McKesson Corporation; Cardinal Health, Inc.; and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation.
The complaint is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
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Fayette commissioners approve lawsuit to recoup opioid costs
Dec 14, 2017 | Herald Standard (PA)
By Mike Tony
Fayette County’s commissioners voted Thursday to authorize filing a lawsuit seeking to recover costs incurred by the county due to its rampant opioid abuse.
The remainder of this article is under paywall at: http://www.heraldstandard.com/news/local_news/fayette-commissioners-approve-lawsuit-to-recoup-opioid-costs/article_cf50d670-a3a1-5eed-92f9-39a0a8931e59.html
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York County sues opioid companies
Dec 15, 2017 | Tribune - Review (PA)
By Staff
Add York County to the list of Pennsylvania governments hoping to recoup some of the money they've spent on the opioid epidemic.
The county Friday sued 25 opioid manufacturers and distributors to recover in York County Common Pleas, according to a press release from Napoli Shkolnik PLCC, the private law firm handling the case for the county.
Armstrong, Beaver, Greene, Lackawanna, Lawrence and Washington counties have filed similar lawsuits and Westmoreland County is preparing to file one.
The 252-page complaint details how the 25 defendants downplayed the risks of OxyContin, Fentanyl and other opioids that cause York County to spend money on first responder overtime, Narcan training, emergency care and treatment, the lawsuit says. Overdose deaths quadrupled in the past decade, the lawsuit says.
“The economic drain on the county is ongoing and we hope to recover funds for York so they can continue to rebuild their community,” said Joseph Ciaccio, one of the lawyers representing the county.
A study released this year concludes that Westmoreland County spent $18.8 million in 2016 on costs attributed to the drug crisis.
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Lacey Joins Fight Against Drug Companies
Dec 15, 2017 | New Jersey Online (NJ)
By Kimerly Bosco
Lacey Township is joining the fight against pharmaceutical companies in the wake of the heroin and opioid epidemic in New Jersey, according to officials at a recent township meeting.
Lacey is the third town, following Toms River and Brick, to join a state lawsuit against drug manufacturers for misrepresenting and inaccurately marketing prescription products, said Lacey Mayor Peter Curatolo. Teaming up with other New Jersey towns and the law firm, Motley Rice LLC of Washington D.C., Lacey is taking larger action to tackle the issue.
Prescription drugs have been making a name for themselves as the new gateway drug that gets users easily addicted. They are more expensive and harder to get a hold of, and this is what then causes users to turn to cheaper and more accessible drugs, such as heroin, officials have said.
Lacey has experienced a great loss when it comes to the opioid crisis, said Curatolo. The town has suffered from countless breaking and entering incidents that Curatolo believes to be fueled by those that are “prisoners to their addiction.”
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Curatolo. “If any entity acted inappropriately when marketing the [prescription] product, it should be held accountable.”
Despite the many efforts that Lacey Township has made to combat the rising drug problem, such as implementing school resource officers and substance awareness counselors in schools, the problems with addiction continues, said Curatolo. While these noble efforts can be effective, the township is incurring extra expenses and they need a bigger solution.
Motley Rice LLC is taking on the lawsuit for no compensation. Curatolo emphasized this because it means that there will be no cost to the taxpayers as a result of this lawsuit. Together, the New Jersey towns involved hope that they can win out against the big pharmaceutical companies to help their towns out of the hole that heroin and opioid addiction have dug for them.
“We are doing absolutely everything humanly possible,” to work on solving the drug problem, said Curatolo.
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Greenfield sues big pharma over opioids
Dec 15, 2017 | Greenfield Recorder (MA)
By Joshua Solomon
Greenfield has become the first community in the state to file a lawsuit against opioid distributors and manufacturers, joining dozens of other cities and towns across the country that are looking for financial reparations for the ongoing addiction epidemic.
The Greenfield lawsuit harks back to a move Congress made in 1970 to try to control the number of opioid pills distributed. The goal was to have manufacturers “halt suspicious orders and control against the diversion of these dangerous drugs to illegitimate uses,” a statement from the law firm in charge of the suit explains.
Now this lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, plans to hold these manufacturers accountable for their actions, asking for the damages accrued over the years.
Greenfield Mayor William Martin hopes this lawsuit will do one of two things: raise awareness of the extent of the problem locally and help the town cope with the social consequences of the epidemic.
“We wouldn’t have this situation if we didn’t have lax monitoring of opioids,” Martin said.
The defendants named in the suit include big name companies like Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma.
Purdue Pharma responded to the Greenfield lawsuit in a statement: “We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and are dedicated to being part of the solution. ... We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”
The suit was put together by Martin and Greenfield native Thomas Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Law in Boston.
While Merrigan, a former district court judge in Greenfield, said the lawsuit will not likely be concluded for several years, he said it’s important to sign on now, in part because “the extent of this epidemic is going to require massive (financial) resources.”
“This is just another facet of the community power to try and fix the epidemic,” Merrigan said, alluding to local addiction-fighting efforts like the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin, which his brother John heads.
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan, a co-founder of the task force, agreed with the goal of the lawsuit.
“Opioid manufacturers and distributors need to be held accountable for their outrageous sales and marketing practices,” Sullivan said in a statement. “Their reckless conduct has inflicted death and sorrow in every community in America. The funds recovered should go toward prevention, treatment and recovery.”
Other communities have filed suits noting the similarity with actions filed a generation ago against cigarette makers.
The Greenfield lawsuit states that the town has been “hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis” and the “high rate of prescriptions only scratches the surface of the full extent of the problem in Greenfield and Franklin County.”
Further, the suit claims that nine in 10 people in Franklin County who need addiction treatment do not receive it.
“Let’s stop kidding ourselves and have them own up to their obligation to be compliant with the law, which would prevent community addiction,” Martin said.
The mayor added that this lawsuit, which will likely be settled well after his current term in office, could help to ease a burden on the taxpayer that this epidemic has created.
“One unique part of this is I see the need for tax dollars to go to social service agencies and non-government organizations to create a support network for each addicted individual. I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s a good response,” Martin said. “But I’m wondering how we all end up paying for it. ... The real epidemic is everyone is coming up with more time, more money and more programs to satisfy (the manufacturers’ and distributors’) mistake.”
Defendants
The complete list of defendants, as stated in the lawsuit, are as follows: AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation; Cardinal Health Inc.; McKesson Corporation; Purdue Pharma L.P.; Purdue Pharma Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company Inc.; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd.; Teva pharmaceuticals USA Inc.; Cephalon Inc.; Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. (now known as) Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc. n/k/a Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Noramco Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Allergan plc (formerly known as) Actavis pls; Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. n/k/a Actavis Inc.; Watson Laboratories Inc.; Actavis LLC; Actavis Pharma Inc. f/k/a Watson Pharma Inc.; Mallinckrodt plc and Mallinckrodt LLC.
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Bloomington, 2 Indiana counties to join opioid lawsuit
Dec 14, 2017 | Associated Press
By Staff
Officials of two Indiana counties and one city are joining a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and distributors for their alleged role in fueling the opioid abuse crisis.
The city of Bloomington and the counties Lake and Monroe have signed off on an agreement with Cohen and Malad, an Indianapolis-based law firm, to file a lawsuit. The county commissioners didn’t know when the suit will be filed.
The agreement says that the lawsuit will seek to recover funds from those companies to cover costs that government entities have incurred due to the epidemic.
Indianapolis filed a similar suit in November. Several states and dozens of U.S. municipalities have also filed similar complaints.
Several of the companies accused in the suit have denied any wrongdoing, saying they’re trying to help solve the abuse problem.
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Hoping to recover soaring costs, Allen County government likely to sue opioid makers
Dec 15, 2017 | News-Sentinel (IN)
By Kevin Leninger
With an estimated 40,000 people in Allen County abusing opiods, local officials appear ready to join a growing legal effort to make drug manufacturers pay for the cost of courts, incarceration, treatment and other related problems.
The county Commissioners Friday were expected to sign an agreement with three law firms that would investigate and pursue claims against drug companies for expenses caused by opiod abuse, which was labeled a “public health crisis” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year and represents an annual national economic burden of $78.4 billion, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“It’s not fair to go to the taxpayer to support a problem that may have been caused by the manufacturers,” said Commissioner Nelson Peters, who does not want to absolve users of individual responsibility but also does not want to protect manufacturers who, according to a document called “combatting the opioid epidemic — litigation on behalf of county governments” prepared by the law firms, have dramatically increased opioid use through false claims and aggressive marketing. The same firms generating billions of dollars in annual opioid sales are also profiting from the sale of drugs used to combat the problem, the firms state.
Peters can’t say how much opioid abuse is costing Allen County, but the commissioners consider the problem so serious they made addressing it one of their top legislative priorities for 2018 and Park Center has announced plans to open a new opioid treatment center in New Haven.
The Wisconsin law firms of Crueger Dickinson and von Briesen would litigate the lawsuit along with Simmons Hanly Conroy, a national firm, and local counsel. The firms would be paid through any settlement collected. Several other counties, cities and states have already filed similar claims in federal court.
“While ‘pharma’ was raking in profits, county governments have ben forced to spend a significant amount of money combatting this epidemic,” the attorneys stated. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have used opioids, and 4.7 percent — 11.5 million — have misused them. That amounts to $42 billion annually in lost productivity, according to the CDC.
The attorneys argue that “unless a critical mass of counties not only file suit and coordinate efforts, it is a safe bet that pharma will simply continue to fight each individual case without contemplating a resolution. Any county that does not get involved risks receiving no recovery.”
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City files suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors
Dec 15, 2017 | The Courier-Times (IN)
By Kevin Green
The City of New Castle is joining Indianapolis and several other Hoosier cities in filing a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
That 161-page suit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana Indianapolis Division.
According to a news release supplied to The Courier-Times by city attorney Dave Copenhaver, New Castle Mayor Greg York filed the suit on behalf of the city against opioid manufacturers and distributors for their part in causing the opioid crisis that has gripped the community as well as other Hoosier municipalities and much of the nation.
As an example, the release notes in 2015, Henry County had 9.2 million doses of opioid drugs prescribed to patients.
The lawsuit was filed to recover funds to address the overwhelming financial burden the opioid crisis has placed on the city, the release states.
“Opioid addiction has been recognized as a national epidemic,” Mayor York said. “The economic impact to a community the size of New Castle is so great that it is difficult to quantify. The human cost to our families is even greater. Our hope for this litigation is that it is a real step in attacking this nightmare and addressing these issues.”
The manufacturers named as defendants in the suit include Purdue Pharma; Cephalon, Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals; Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals; Noramco, Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals; Mallinckrodt PLC; Allergan PLC and Wasson Pharmaceuticals.
The lawsuit alleges these manufacturers deceptively marketed the appropriate uses, risks and safety of opioids.
The distributors named as defendants include AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.; Cardinal Health, Inc. and McKesson Corporation.
The lawsuit alleges these distributors failed in their duty to report and stop suspicious orders of opioids that flooded the City of New Castle.
“Opioid manufacturers and distributors must be held accountable for their roles in creating this addiction epidemic,” said Lynn Toops of Cohen & Malad, LLP, the Indianapolis law firm spearheading this legal action.
The lawsuit’s claim for relief states that the city is seeking compensation for past and future costs to abate the ongoing public nuisance caused by the opioid epidemic; create an “abatement fund” for the purposes of abating the opioid nuisance; award actual damages and treble damages; fines; injunctive and equitable relief; forfeiture as deemed proper by the court; attorney fees and all costs and expenses of the suit pursuant to the city’s claims; and for the defendants to award the city the damages caused by the opioid epidemic including the costs for providing medical care, additional therapeutic and prescription drug purchases, and other treatments for patients suffering from opioid-related addictions or diseases including overdoses and deaths.
The suit also seeks the costs for providing treatment, counseling and rehabilitation services; the costs for providing treatment of infants born with opioid-related medical conditions; costs for providing care for children whose parents suffer from opioid-related disability or incapacitation and costs associated with law enforcement and public safety relating to the opioid epidemic.
Lastly, the lawsuit asks the court for a trial by jury.
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Jefferson County files opioid lawsuit
Dec 15, 2017 | WTRF (WV)
By Brooke Chaplain
A lawsuit against the manufacturers of opioid prescription painkillers.
It's something Jefferson County has been considering for several months.
But now, it's a reality and the people 7News talked to said it's about time.
"I think that the drug companies do bear a significant responsibility on how these drugs are distributed and how they're marketed. So, I do support what the Jefferson County Commissioners are doing if it slows down the spread of opiates and has them prescribed in a more responsible way. I think that's a positive move," said Eugene Gallo, Executive Director at EOCC.
Studies show Jefferson County has one of the highest number of opioid deaths in the state of Ohio.
That means major costs in terms of jail time, foster care, rehab centers, and more.
Commissioner Thomas Graham said it's finally time to ease the financial burden opioids have caused.
"We hope the corporate greed will not continue in regards to the production and distribution of some of these drugs that may have misleading information, much like the tobacco companies, in terms of how quick the addiction process is. Hopefully we can get that stopped at that level," Graham said.
Officials said the 260-page complaint names more than 20 defendantsBut the county isn't seeking money as punishment.
They're not just looking to pass the blame either.
"It's not to deny personal responsibility of individuals. We want to educate the individual and deal with the corporate problem that may exist as well," Graham said.
Officials said this lawsuit could take several years, but they're hopeful. -
Dec 14, 2017 | Rare Houston (TX)
By Danielle Husband
As the nation faces an ongoing opioid crisis, Houston is taking action:
On Wednesday, Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan announced the county’s suit against 21 pharmaceutical companies, four Houston area doctors and one pharmacist for their alleged role in Houston’s growing opioid crisis.
Ryan said the named parties worked together to put profits over patients, creating a costly and life-threatening epidemic across the city.
“We accuse them of creating a public nuisance of conspiracy and neglect. These defendants placed their quest for profits above the public good,” Ryan provided in a statement. “The defendants engaged in a campaign we believe of lies, half-truths, and deceptions to create a market, encourage over-prescribing and the long term use of opioids.”
According to reports, the doctors and pharmacist are also facing criminal charges, which are still pending.
Meanwhile, across the nation, patients are still regularly prescribed painkillers – a practice doctors say a is potentially contributing to a bigger problem than what they’re initially treating.
As one local addict explained, even taking the doctor recommended dosage of an opioid can have dangerous consequences:
“I was prescribed a lot more than I needed,” recovering addict Eric Zimmerman said in an interview with NewsFix. “Within a week, I didn’t need them anymore, but I was given a month’s supply. I liked how they made me feel so, I kept taking them. I didn’t know how serious the addiction possibility was, especially physically.”
Experts further warn pharmaceuticals sold on the streets may not always be the same thing as what’s in prescription bottles; dealers are now reportedly pushing drugs, like heroin and fentanyl, into pills so buyers or addicts will mistake them for pharmaceutical-grade medicine.
Because it’s difficult to tell what’s in the pills, it’s easy to overdose.
“Maybe they contain heroin, maybe they contain fentanyl, the amount of those ingredients in there make it very dangerous for someone to use, because you don’t know if it’s an amount that can cause an overdose,” James Miller, who works for the Houston Forensic Science Center, said in an interview.
As addicts and dealers doctor-shop to attain more pills, manufacturers are scrambling to create more complex formulas to transform into street drugs.
Until the epidemic is stopped, health policy experts agree taxpayers may be stuck footing the bill for the cost to society, such as those who overdose or suffer from an opioid-related problem and are without health insurance.
Currently, Texas is receiving $27 million in federal funding to treat those addicted to opioids.
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Stop Gouging Americans, Big Pharma (EDITORIAL)
Dec 14, 2017 | Clare County Review (MI)
By Mike Wilcox
A couple of months ago I called out Big Pharma for flooding the market with opioids and the adverse effect they were having on society. Many experts blame Big Pharma for starting and perpetuating the Opioid crisis by offering unscrupulous doctors thousands of pain pills so they in turn could oversell them to patients whether they needed them or not.
But Big Pharma is to blame for society ills beyond the Opioid crisis. I blame them for the skyrocketing costs of health care. Making drugs appears to be a license to legally rip-off the American public, and the practice goes unchecked despite a number of reports calling out unscrupulous pharmaceutical firms.
A study published recently shows the nation’s top ten drug makers jacked up the prices on some of the most widely prescribed drugs by 40 to 70 percent over the last four years. Mind you, those increases amount to fourteen times the rate of inflation.
Unabashedly, those ten Big Pharma firms have stashed over $500 billion in profits offshore in the same time period. That amounts to $133 billion in unpaid U.S. taxes.
Big Pharma simply shifts control of a drug formula to a foreign subsidiary, most likely in Ireland or Bermuda, and then licenses the formula back to the U.S. parent at a steep price. This increases the parent company’s cost, thereby reducing its profits and thus the taxes it would pay to the U.S. Treasury. Meanwhile profits are artificially booked where they’ll be taxed little if at all.
So Big Pharma wins two ways. They can increase the price of popular drugs, thus gouging ordinary Americans, and at the same time, can dodge paying taxes.
The study found that the retail price of nine drugs commonly used by older Americans leapt an average of 71% over the four year time period. This includes Pfizer’s very popular arthritis pain drug Celebrex. Among the biggest spikes were Pfizer’s nerve medication Lyrica which doubled, while the price paid by Medicaid for Johnson & Johnson’s HIV treatment, Prezista jumped 131 percent.Furthermore the cost of insulin, despite no increased manufacturing costs has tripled in the last 10 years. We wrote about the epipen, the lifesaving allergy medicine, a year ago, and noted the price has increased by 500% over the last few years, despite again, no real changes in manufacturing costs.
Many new cancer drugs cost routinely over $100,000 a year. Unless you have really good health insurance, you and I aren’t going to be able to afford these. Heck one new cystic fibrosis drug costs over $300,000 a year.
The irony of all this is most drugs cost very little to manufacture. I don’t want to bore you with statistics, but I found these to be outrageous. The cost for Claritin raw materials is 71 cents. That means one Claritin pill is marked up 30,306 percent. Raw materials for one Celebrex pill cost 60 cents. Their markup is 21,712 percent. And you wonder why Big Pharma can spend so much money for television advertising?
Being a libertarian, I rarely propose government interference, but in the case of Big Pharma, our leaders need to come down hard. They are destroying the lives of millions of Americans. We can’t afford to be healthy. We can’t afford to live and prosper in our later years.
Big Pharma needs to be reeled in. They shouldn’t be allowed to charge exorbitant prices for drugs. They shouldn’t be allowed to shelter their profits overseas.
Time to act Congress.
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Pharmaceutical Sales in the Era of the Opioid Crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | Medreps
By Staff
The ongoing opioid crisis continues to plague the pharmaceutical sales industry with unique challenges.
In fact, more than 63 percent of drug overdoses in 2015 (50,000) were directly caused by opioid abuse, according to a 2017 report by the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).
Yet, the problem is actually worse than anyone thought. The report found that opioid-related deaths are 24 percent higher than what is reported on death certificates.
This crisis is the indisputable reason for increased regulation and stringent new rules. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for patients who legitimately rely on prescription drugs to get the medicine they need to survive. It’s easy to see why the public view of pharmaceutical sales is, generally, very negative.
These issues have the potential to permanently change the face of the pharma sales industry. Let’s take a deeper look at what you can expect:1) Increased regulation and rules
As regulation increases, it becomes more difficult to innovate and get new drugs approved. This will affect the ability of companies to generate sales and market existing products, while also inhibiting the production of new, safer drugs.
The decreased revenue would, ultimately, lead to layoffs and corporate closures/downsizing, making it more difficult for pharmaceuticals to be obtained by the end user.
While researchers and law enforcement are working together to find solutions to the opioid crisis, those who have a legitimate need are stuck in the middle. These regulations affect sales on even the most commonly prescribed and least-often abused prescription painkillers, reaching far across the market as doctors become unable or unwilling to write or replace necessary prescriptions.2) Negative public view of industry
As it becomes more difficult for patients who rely on these drugs to safely and legally obtain necessary medication, they may be forced to turn to dangerous alternatives.
These alternatives, not directly managed by healthcare professionals, run a high-risk of addiction. Additionally, many patients will suffer through the pain or face more fatal implications due to lack of available medication, all of which further increases the negativity around pharmaceuticals.
A longer process for new drugs to be approved and more rules placed on the sale and distribution of prescription drugs will force pharmaceutical companies to pass the higher costs associated with new and existing drugs onto the consumer. This will require patients to further ‘tighten the belt,’ creating more resentment and animosity toward the industry.
In addition, lawsuits are expected to increase. The attorney general of Ohio has filed suit against five drug companies, accusing them of “misrepresenting the risks of prescription opioid painkillers.” The suit suggests that holding back information plays a role in consumer drug addiction and abuse.
Similar lawsuits have been filed in New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In the latter case, officials in the city of New Haven claim the manufacturers of Oxycontin “engaged in deceptive marketing,” and didn’t disclose full details about the addictive possibilities of their product.3) Necessary (and unwanted) changes
Already viewed by some in the public as “drug pushers,” reps could now be further demonized. This would take a toll on their work and home life.
As more workers leave the industry due to complications presented by the opioid crisis, those left behind will be subjected to longer hours without increased compensation. Unable and unwilling to shoulder this growing burden, those reps will leave as well, prompting a vicious cycle.
More than 76 percent of medical sales reps surveyed in the 2018 MedReps Best Places to Worksaid work/life balance is the most important aspect of their jobs. When that line is blurred, these qualified professionals will be forced to look for other opportunities.
A shift in the focus of the industry could also create some undesirable waves. A 2016 perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Reducing the Risks of Relief — The CDC Opioid-Prescribing Guideline) suggested pharmaceutical sales, in the shadow of the opioid crisis, will become more of a grassroots public health campaign, with a higher focus on education — making sales secondary.
Satisfaction would drastically decline for reps who enjoy the selling aspect of the job most or count on the high commission payouts.
There’s no question that the opioid crisis will continue to threaten the pharmaceutical sales industry. While the future remains uncertain, it’s clear that pharma sales reps are in for some sweeping changes and career soul-searching.
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These Pharmaceutical Companies Are Making a Killing Off the Opioid Crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | The Nation
By Daniel Denvir
On September 16, 2014, 25-year-old Matthew Comfort walked into his mother’s bathroom in the working-class Philadelphia suburb of Bensalem, shot up heroin and died from an overdose. His mother, Liz Fox, was working at home that day to keep an eye on her son, who had struggled with addiction for three years, including spending time homeless on the streets of Kensington, once the heart of the city’s manufacturing industry and today its epicenter for injection drug use. He had recently been released from jail, where he had served time for theft he had committed to supply his habit. At his mom’s house, the two had searched for an inpatient rehab slot with no success. Before he left jail, Fox had asked that her son be sent directly to rehab. She received no response.
In jail, Matt had been forced to detox. As a result, his tolerance was low when he was released, putting him at a higher risk of overdose. Nonetheless, the Bucks County jail had not supplied him with naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses and that might have saved his life. And his mother didn’t really know much about naloxone, or that it was something that she might want to keep on hand. Shockingly, the emergency crew that responded wasn’t carrying it either, she said.
“I think everyone should have it and everyone should be trained and ready because we’re losing a whole generation,” said Fox, who now volunteers with Angels in Motion, which, armed with naloxone, distributes food, clothing and other resources to users on the Philly streets.
Yet, for all naloxone’s life-saving promise, the drug remains out of reach for thousands of people who need it. From cities like Philadelphia and New York to Southwestern Ohio, family members and first responders are struggling to pay for enough doses to treat the need. And that is partly because the high price of the drug is limiting its distribution even as an opioid crisis tears through the United States.
Between the beginning of February 2015 and the end of January 2016, an estimated 52,898 Americans died from a drug overdose, many from opioids like OxyContin, heroin and, most alarmingly, from the extremely potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. In the year that followed, the number of fatal overdoses recorded rose to 64,070. Many of these deaths should have been preventable: naloxone can reverse an overdose before it fatally depresses a user’s respiratory and central nervous system. But as overdose deaths spike and government moves to respond, companies have seized the opportunity to profit from the crisis by exploiting skyrocketing demand.
Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, for instance, raised the average wholesale price of its naloxone, which can be injected or outfitted off-label with an atomizer for intranasal use, from $20.34 to $39.60, according to a December 2016 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The price of the popular Narcan nasal spray, manufactured by Adapt Pharma and approved in 2015, has not been raised, but it came on the market in 2015 at a high average wholesale price of $150. The largest price hike was for Evzio, an auto-injector device designed for easy use by laypersons. In 2014, a two-dose package of Evzio, manufactured by kaléo, cost $690. As of 2016, it cost $4,500. That’s more than a 500-percent increase.
Meanwhile, sales of naloxone have increased from $21.3 million in 2011 to $60.8 million in 2014 to $274.1 million in 2016, according to data provided by the healthcare analytics firm IQVIA.
The price hikes have reverberated throughout the country but have taken a particularly acute toll on state and local governments, which have made purchasing and distributing naloxone—to first responders, non-profit service providers, as well as community members—a top priority. As prices have climbed, squeezing already-tight budgets, they have found it harder and harder to get sufficient numbers of naloxone kits to the front lines of the crisis.
“States and local governments are often the primary purchasers of naloxone, but skyrocketing prices are making it increasingly challenging for them to afford this lifesaving overdose antidote,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, who began sounding the alarm about naloxone profiteering as early as 2015, in a statement to The Nation. “It is unconscionable that any company is willing to put people’s lives at risk for a higher profit.”
Consider Philadelphia, where more than 900 people died from a drug overdose in 2016 and significantly more are expected to die this year. (As of June, the death rate had jumped nearly 60 percent over the same period the previous year). In Philadelphia, explained Alicia Taylor, a spokesperson for the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Health and Human Services, in an email, “[t]he high prices of naloxone have limited the number of doses that [the local government] and its partner organizations can purchase and distribute.” And that, she said, “has hurt our ability to treat overdoses and save lives.”
Indeed, the situation is such that the Tuttleman Foundation this year stepped in with a $50,000 grant to help supply naloxone kits to police officers. The donation was expected to allow the city to double the number of officers carrying the anti-overdose drug, from 1500 to 3000, or almost half the force.
“It is unconscionable that any company is willing to put people’s lives at risk for a higher profit.” — Bernie Sanders
One person who could help bring naloxone prices back down to earth—or, at the very least, help states and cities to afford the higher prices—is Donald Trump. In October, Trump took a much-delayed step in declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency—a move that was more limited than declaring a national emergency and that experts say likely won’t amount to much. To the dismay of advocates and Senate Democrats, he took no action to tackle the high price of naloxone, including by having the government directly negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.
Trump did, however, promise, “really big, really great advertising” to encourage people not to try drugs in the first place.
At first blush, the naloxone price hikes are perplexing. Naloxone is far from a brand-new drug, and generic versions of the injectable form of the drug have been available since 1985—a fact that would seem to keep prices of the injectable from running too high. But while injectable versions of the drug are available in generic form, “they don’t have many manufacturers,” explained Ravi Gupta, an Internal Medicine Resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital and co-author of last year’s New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) report. Indeed, only six different companies manufacture the drug, five selling injectable forms and one selling a nasal spray, according to the article. What’s more, kaléo and Adapt hold patents for their respective modes of administration. And so, with such “limited competition,” Gupta said, “companies can increase the price.”
Which is precisely what they have been doing.
Elvis Rosado, Education and Community Outreach Coordinator at the harm reduction group Prevention Point Philadelphia, said that he noticed prices rising just after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf joined counterparts across the country to put a “standing order” in place for naloxone, meaning that anyone could buy it at pharmacies without a prescription. “Soon after the standing order went into place prices started to change,” said Rosado, speculating on the timing of the price hikes. “Once people became familiar with the fact that there was now easy access for anybody, and everybody to be able to purchase it, somehow the prices started to skyrocket.”
Indeed, the NEJM article noted that in 2016 “Evzio’s price jumped significantly and without explanation the month before” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines recommending that clinicians co-prescribe naloxone to patients taking opioids who have higher risk factors.
Rosado said that if naloxone prices were lowered, more families could purchase the drug. It should be, he said, a basic product like a fire extinguisher in homes where someone uses opioids—including legally prescribed doses.
“We think we’re going to have over 900 overdose related deaths in Philadelphia County. Three times the homicide rate. So it’s huge,” said Prevention Point Philadelphia Executive Director Jose Benitez. “Clearly we’re not getting enough Narcan out to those who are at highest risk.”
What would Prevention Point do if the price were cut in half? Simple, said Benitez: they would purchase twice as much.
The same, effectively, goes for city of Philadelphia where, in 2016, first responders administered roughly 5,000 doses of naloxone and spent at least $275,000 on purchasing various forms of the drug. “We would like to be distributing and administering much more,” said Taylor. “We would like to know why the companies have such a huge markup for their prices.”
The situation is growing serious in rural parts of Pennsylvania, where the opioid crisis is hitting hard without anything resembling the public health and harm reduction infrastructure that’s in place in large cities.
Tioga County is sparsely populated and remote, just south of the New York border, with a county seat two-and-a-half hours by car from Harrisburg. Though the total number of reported overdose deaths in 2016—six—don’t remotely compare to those in more larger counties, the crisis is real.
Lisa Appleby, a certified recovery specialist at Harbor Counseling, tries to distribute as much naloxone as she can to users and their families. But she is not close to meeting the need. The many opioid users she can’t reach must go to the pharmacy, where they face stigma from pharmacists and high prices if they’re paying out of pocket. They often don’t go.
“Most people who are using heroin don’t have insurance,” said Appleby, a recovering user who said her own life was saved by naloxone.
Appleby would purchase 200 kits right now if she could afford to. As it is, she is trying to raise money to buy 20 or 25.
“The kits that we gave out last year, they were used,” she said, noting that she personally administered naloxone to four people. “Peoples live are being saved, and they’re being changed.”
When asked, naloxone manufacturers defend their pricing practices. In a statement, kaléo said that their auto-injector has no co-pay for people with commercial insurance, and that they have donated more than a quarter million devices to public health departments, first responders and advocacy groups. In a statement, Pfizer, which acquired Hospira in 2015, told The Nation that “the list price does not reflect the considerable discounts offered to our customers” and that their “Naloxone Access Program includes a donation of up to 1 million doses of naloxone over four years and $1 million in opioid overdose grants to several states.” According to the NEJM report, Hospira’s cost was lower than injectable naloxone manufactured by Mylan and West-Ward by volume even after it more than doubled in recent years. Mylan said that it had reduced the cost of its product in June. West-Ward said that its product was a good deal compared to the one made by kaléo.
Adapt, whose product is in high demand because of its ease of use for laypeople, emphasizes that it provides the only approved naloxone nasal spray on the market, and said that it is doing its best to get Narcan to the people who need it, including by providing a discount to government and non-profit agencies.
“Many different factors go into setting price for a pharmaceutical product and it’s very complex,” said Adapt President of US Operations Mike Kelly. “Our vision is to make sure that every single household in the United States has access to this product. Anybody whose taking an opioid has this product in a medicine cabinet.”
But Adapt’s prices for Narcan are still high, especially given that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the federal National Institutes of Health, designed and conducted the clinical trials.
According to NIDA, their scientists worked with Lightlake Therapeutics Inc. to develop the clinical study protocols, after which NIDA scientists working at Vince & Associates, a NIDA contractor, directed the studies. Lightlake in turn licensed the pharmaceutical product to Adapt. NIDA said that it could not provide a total breakdown of costs, including what portion of the tab was picked up by taxpayers.
Last January, NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “more market competition is expected to help bring down the cost of naloxone products and increase their distribution. ”
Yet clearly, that hasn’t happened. Adapt, in fact, has been making moves that could restrict competition by blocking manufacturers of other naloxone nasal-sprays from coming onto the market.
In July 2016, Adapt petitioned the FDA to take actions that could make it more difficult for new naloxone products to receive agency approval. These included requesting that the FDA specify an optimal dose of naloxone before approving any new naloxone products for individual use and that the agency not approve any product that does not meet specific design specifications. The FDA mostly rejected the petition.
Dr. Peter Lurie, who until recently led Health and Human Services activities on naloxone as Associate Commissioner for Public Health Strategy and Analysis at the Food and Drug Administration, said that Adapt was clearly trying to restrict competition.
“I would characterize this as shutting the barn door once you’ve already entered the barn. And that’s what I think is the broader purpose of the petition,” said Lurie, who recently became executive director and president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “It doesn’t mean that the petition doesn’t raise certain interesting and even important regulatory and scientific issues. But viewed as a whole, the desired impact was to shut the barn door after you’ve already entered.”
Patricia J. Zettler, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law who formerly worked as an associate chief counsel at the FDA, agreed, describing Adapt’s effort “as consistent with those other types of petitions where we might be concerned that the company is attempting to delay competition.”
Meanwhile, in a related attempt to keep competition at bay, Adapt and its partner company Opiant have brought suit in federal court against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which makes generics. The companies charge that Teva’s application to sell a generic form of naloxone nasal spray infringes on their patent.
Adapt would not respond to follow up questions on their FDA petition or on their legal fight against Teva.
Realistically, prices of naloxone must fall dramatically for the need to be met. Mark Kinzly, co-founder of the Texas Overdose Naloxone Initiative, suggests that the optimal price would be “between one and five dollars. Closer to one.”
The companies, however, are selling naloxone at high prices because there is little competition in the market for its two forms, injectable and intranasal. And the federal government refuses to rein in pharmaceutical profiteering.
New York City recently switched from purchasing naloxone from Amphastar to buying Adapt’s product because it is easier for laypeople and first responders to use. The average wholesale price of Amphastar’s naloxone had nearly doubled to $39.60 in recent years. The city had begun to receive a $6 per dose rebate through a deal the New York Attorney General had struck with the company to help defray the cost and prevent shortages. Likewise, the city and state have secured Adapt’s product at below-retail prices. But the overall high prices still pose a threat.
“When the price of naloxone goes up, that has the potential to limit access” said Dr. Hillary Kunins, Assistant Commissioner of Alcohol and Drug Use-Prevention, Care, and Treatment at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in a statement to The Nation.
In August, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a new program to subsidize co-payments for people purchasing naloxone with prescription health insurance coverage. That will likely save lives. But taxpayers will still be picking up the tab for high prices, just as high drug costs to insurance companies are passed along to consumers via premiums and deductibles. And even with discounts, bulk purchasers, such as local government agencies and nonprofits, will continue to struggle.
“We’ve sort of been on this roller coaster for the last couple of years,” said Daniel Raymond, Deputy Director of Planning and Policy at the Harm Reduction Coalition. “We’ve clearly heard from programs and health departments…that the price increases have really stretched their budgets but so far they haven’t broken them.”
Worse yet, the gap between those who need naloxone and those who have it appears to be growing as more powerful opioids like fentanyl drive up overdose rates.
The price spikes have received surprisingly little media scrutiny given the widespread coverage of the opioid crisis and the viral outrage over drug company greed, from pharma bro Martin Shkreli to Mylan’s profiteering from EpiPens (as mentioned above, Mylan also produces naloxone).
That’s likely because naloxone patients aren’t as sympathetic as the children and parents buying EpiPens. They are opioid users. And despite the fact that the white face of the opioid crisis tends to elicit the sort of public and political empathy that was never offered to black crack users in the 1980s, drug use remains heavily stigmatized.
Pharmaceutical companies defend these high prices in part by pointing to discounts they offer to non-profits and government.
Adapt, for example, sells naloxone to the Philadelphia suburb-based Drug Addiction oVerdose Education, or DAVE, at a discounted rate of $75 per kit, said founder Cathy Messina. “Adapt has been very, very good to us,” said Messina, who started the group after two of her sons overdosed the same night at her house three years ago, one fatally. “I think it’s very generous.”
But the two-tiered pricing scheme is not about charity but rather a matter of selling to different consumers at the price point that will maximize profits and avoid negative publicity, said Ravi Gupta. In economics, it’s called price discrimination—the same idea behind movie theaters offering discounts to senior citizens.
“I don’t think that’s cynical at all,” said Gupta. “That’s just true.”
One way to lower naloxone prices is for government to take action against pharmaceutical profiteering across the board by directly negotiating lower prices directly with the companies. On February 8 of this year, 31 US senators sent a letter to kaléo Pharmaceuticals expressing concern that the company has “responded to the increased need for naloxone devices by ratcheting up the price.” More recently, Democratic senators have asked theTrump administration to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate reduced pricing for government purchases.
The authors of the NEJM article suggest a number of possible solutions, including that the federal government buy naloxone in bulk to attract more companies into the market; contract with a manufacturer to produce kaléo’s product in exchange for royalty payments; and allow the importation of generics from international manufacturers. So far, as overdose deaths skyrocket, none of that has happened.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies continue to make a killing.
“I appreciate folks want something for less,” said Kelly, Adapt President of US Operations. “And we feel that our pricing structure allows us to maximize access.”
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Drugwatch Report Shows Big Pharma Created Opioid Crisis (PRESS RELEASE)
Dec 15, 2017 | Drugwatch
Not long ago, prescription opioids were sparingly dispensed in the United States.
But somehow, the medical community’s aversion to addiction risks took a backseat, and pain treatment with opioids became the norm. Consequently, opioids flooded the U.S. and nearly 200,000 died.
Federal, state and local governments are grappling with the financial and human costs, families are left to pick up the pieces, and officials are looking for solutions. How did we get here?
A new report by Drugwatch called Big Pharma and The Opioid Crisis: Profiting from Pain answers that question. As veteran journalist Elaine Silvestrini reveals, the overwhelming evidence points to Big Pharma.
Among the findings at https://www.drugwatch.com/featured/opioid-crisis-big-pharma/:Pharmaceutical companies funded continuing education courses or paid teachers of those courses who provided information that encouraged opioid prescribing.Pharma made financial contributions to organizations that oversaw and rated health care facilities, creating incentives to dispense more opioids.Drug manufacturers have been sued in civil court, penalized and faced criminal prosecutions for pushing opioids for off-label uses, some of which could be deadly to patients.Pharma paid doctors who spread the misleading message that opioids were safe and predominantly non-addictive when given to pain patients, and that denying those drugs was cruel.
Drugwatch is a resource for consumers, journalists and researchers, providing original, comprehensive content as well as access to expert sources and patient stories. Contact Elaine Silvestrini at 407-545-2797 or esilvestrini@drugwatch.com. Contact Drugwatch Managing Editor Kevin Connolly at 407-917-8670 or kconnolly@drugwatch.com.
For more information, contact jack.noftsger@contentharmony.com.Big Pharma’s Block on Competition: A Bad Prescription for U.S. Drug Prices.Selling Side Effects: Big Pharma’s Marketing Machine.
About Elaine Silvestrini
Elaine Silvestrini writes about dangerous drugs, medical devices and legal issues at Drugwatch. A former Tampa Tribune reporter, Silvestrini brings more than 20 years of experience covering courts, learning legal intricacies and developing investigative pieces.
About Drugwatch
Drugwatch is a consumer education and advocacy website based in Orlando. A trusted resource since 2009, Drugwatch provides information to patients on prescription drugs they take, medical devices they’re implanted with, the conditions and procedures they’ve endured, and the legal options that may be available to them. All content is from or reviewed by medical and legal experts to ensure accuracy and thoroughness.
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Going after opioid manufacturers, distributors in court may help with crisis
Dec 15, 2017 | Medical Press
By Laurel Thomas
As the health care community moves on multiple fronts to address the opioid crisis, one area that holds promise is in litigation against those who manufacture and distribute prescription opioid drugs, according to a University of Michigan researcher.
In a new article published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Rebecca Haffajee of the U-M School of Public Health, along with Michelle Mello of Stanford University, analyzed the history of litigation efforts to hold those parties accountable.
To date, lawsuits have enjoyed limited success, at best settling for amounts not likely to financially harm manufacturers and distributors in the $13 billion-a-year industry enough to prompt change, said Haffajee, assistant professor of health management and policy and an attorney. She also is affiliated with the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
"Early litigation brought by individuals harmed by prescription opioids against drug companies was minimally effective at mitigating the epidemic, in terms of guilty verdicts, large payouts or industry changes in behavior," she said. "However, in more recent years, litigation holds greater promise to succeed and reduce public healthopioid harms, thanks to the large numbers of suits waged by governments and innovative legal theories they employ."
Haffajee said there have been more than 100 cases filed by state and local governments, and more are in the pipeline.
Opioids are a class of drugs that includes prescription pain pills and illicitly manufactured substances like heroin and fentanyl. According to the authors, more than 300,000 people have died from opioid-related overdoses since 2000, and it's expected another half million lives will be lost in the next decade. Health professionals across the country are attempting to slow the epidemic by encouraging physicians to prescribe fewer of the medications and raising awareness about the dangers with the public.
In the piece, the authors note that opioid lawsuits bear similarities to tobacco litigation, in that the suits involve addictive substances and are being brought by classes of similarly situate individuals and by governments. Some of the legal arguments are also similar: that the companies were fraudulent in how they represented the harms of these products and promoted product use in a manner that enabled unjust enrichment—or company profiting at the expense of the government.
"But prescription opioids differ from tobacco, in that they are FDA-approved substances," Haffajee said. "So many claims around defective design and failure to warn (such as on packaging) are less credible for opioids than they were for tobacco."
Add to this that individuals harmed by opioids often did not take them as prescribed and doctors overprescribed them, and company liability is a bit more difficult to establish, she said.
"The most promising legal claims are those that avoid plausible opioid company defenses—such as that the products were FDA-approved, or that individuals and physicians misused or misprescribed the drugs," she said. "So government claims of fraud, misbranding, public nuisance, unjust enrichment and failure to maintain effective controls (under the Controlled Substances Act) stand the best chance of success."
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Doctors Make Big Money Selling You Pills: Corporations Pay The Bonuses – America’s Lawyer (VIDEO)
Dec 15, 2017 | Ring of Fire Network
By Mike Papantonio
Transcript:
Mike Papantonio: Every day, patients in the United States put their lives in the hands of doctors, but sometimes that prescription that you take to the pharmacy after visiting your doctor wasn’t written because the doctor really believes it’s the best treatment for you. Sometimes, it was given to you because the doctor is getting incentives from the drugmaker to write you that prescription. In recent years, the problem of big pharma kickbacks has finally received the level of attention that it deserves. News stories have emerged showing that doctors are being given financial compensation, luxury vacations, and expensive meals all paid for by drug companies in exchange for medical professionals writing prescriptions for their medications instead of competitive medicine.
The federal anti kickback statute is a criminal statute that prohibits the exchange or even the offer to exchange anything of value to reward the referral of federal healthcare program business. This applies to both drug companies and to doctors who accept these rewards, but for too long this statute has been completely ignored by medical professionals putting patients in danger by being given medications that may not be the best course of treatment just because the doctors are hoping for a few more bonuses from big pharma.
Joining me now to talk about this is attorney Dan Soloway. Dan, tell us how bad the problem of big pharma’s kickbacks have become in the United States. Every day, every week, if you’re really paying attention to this, somebody is being fined. What’s your take?
Dan Soloway: My take, Mike, is that the problem is big and the problem is getting worse. The statistics show that 65% of all doctors are now accepting kickbacks and the kickbacks amount to 8.18 million in a yearly time period. What we’re finding through the analyses is the impact that big pharma is having on the actual writing of the prescriptions is something that can be measured, it’s significant, and it’s benefiting their bottom line.
Mike Papantonio: Dan, what do the numbers tell us about how effective these kickbacks are becoming where it comes to prescriptions being written because some doctor has gotten something special from a drug company? We used to see this and all of a sudden the government got involved and said no we’re going to stop it. It seemed like they put the skids down on it. Now, this seems to be reemerging in a really big way. What’s your take?
Dan Soloway: Well, I think the numbers are showing that when the doctors are receiving these kickbacks, there’s a clear relationship between those doctors and the amount of brand name prescriptions they are putting out there for their patients. What they did is they compared those doctors who were getting the kickbacks with those doctors who were receiving no kickbacks and there’s a measurable increase in not only the actual prescription of brand name drugs but how much of the brand names they were prescribing. You’re talking about billions of dollars going into the pockets of these doctors and it having an immediate and measurable impact compared to doctors who take no kickbacks at all.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve learned in recent months that opioid makers, for example, were using this same kind of scheme to push their pills on to Americans. Tell us about their roles in all of this. We know the disaster. We know that as you and I speaking today 150 people will die of a drug overdose and it’s all, if you follow the story, most of the time it’s related to opioids where they go from opioids to heroin or sometimes they simply overdose on the opioids. What is your take on that issue? How big was the push by the drug industry?
Dan Soloway: I think the push by the opioid manufacturer is the worst of anyone. It’s been coupled with, I know a recent arrest of that doctor Kapoor who was with Insys, he was pushing that Fentanyl spray, which is 100 times more powerful than morphine, but he coupled his kickbacks together with fraud and other illegal conduct in a nationwide conspiracy to push these drugs on non-cancer patients. They were pushing, these doctors were writing prescriptions for this Fentanyl for people who had car accidents. Now, is it any surprise that people are dying as a result of the opioid manufacturers pushing their drugs? It’s coming down to the worse common denominator, which is not just medications that shouldn’t prescribed to particular patients, but those medications are killing those patients.
The opioid manufacturers are the worst culprits.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. What we saw as a matter of fact to add to that, we actually saw the industry go out and hire doctors, maybe doctors and scientists that worked for universities, they might’ve worked for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, some of the big universities, to create literature that was all a fraud. It was literature that said doc, you know what, if you prescribe this, you’re going to fine because people don’t really become addicted to opioids. We have the literature. We’ve read it. We’ve seen it where you would have the sales people showing up in a doctor’s office and saying all these things that you’re worried with addiction and all, don’t worry about it because here is this article and it was written by a fraud.
The fraud was paid a lot of money. He’s a doctor. He’s a scientist and all of a sudden, you look credible so there’s a lot of parts to that opioid story. A lot of times, that same thing takes place, as you know, with all pharmaceuticals where you’ll have some university create some document that’s nothing but fraud. They phony up the real clinical information and all of a sudden, doctors are told basically a lie and the person that suffers there is the patient. Tell us about the anti kickback statute. What does it say and what kind of punishments does it call for, Dan, when these kickbacks are proven? It seems to be proven … Every week, I’m seeing a story in one of the journals about how bad this has gotten.
What’s your take?
Dan Soloway: Well, remember, the anti kickback statute only criminalizes that conduct where it’s done for the purpose of giving a federally paid for benefit to big pharma. In other words, there’s 65% of all doctors taking these kickbacks, these trips, these gifts, sometimes even stock in the company of the big pharmaceutical company. They have to give something in return for that. What we’re seeing, the statute itself says you can go to prison for five years, you can have a $25,000 fine, and you can be thrown out of the Medicare program such that your bills are not going to get paid by Medicare. Remember, one out of every four prescriptions is paid for in this country by Medicare, so it’s got some teeth in it. What we’re seeing is the prosecutions are not seeking the convictions.
They’re stopping. They’re settling the cases with big pharma for billions in fines, but they’re not throwing them out of Medicare. The doctors aren’t getting any penalties or sanctions that I’m seeing. Big pharmaceuticals are, but it’s limited to billions of dollars, which they make every year.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Dan, isn’t there another part to this? Every night, if you turn on the television and you go to the corporate media, NBC, CBS, ABC, these media corporations are making billions of dollars by selling pharmaceuticals. If you turn on the nightly news, you will see between seven and nine pharmaceutical advertisements just in the nightly news. The first thing that happens is the patient is bombarded by the pharmaceutical company about you need this drug if you have restless leg. You need this drug if you’ve been sad lately. You need this drug if you can’t sleep at night. Then add onto that these programs that they do for doctors. Yeah, doc, we’re going to take you to Hawaii.
We’re going to give you dinner every Thursday night where we’re going to give and put a show on for you and we’re going to tell you how important our drug is, all kinds of scams they got going. The point is this the doctor is overwhelmed with that and I’m wondering what types of … In order to change it, I think you’d agree. You’ve been in the criminal business as a defense lawyer and a prosecutor, I believe, over the years and you have seen that if you don’t punish criminals, you’re going to have the same thing happen again. I’m wondering what kind of punishments have been handed down to drug companies and doctors that have been found guilty of kickbacks. You mentioned that usually there are none.
Can you cite any where a doctor or pharmaceutical companies really had to spend time in prison because of this?
Dan Soloway: That’s an excellent question and the answer is no. I can’t cite criminals or a big pharmaceutical company CEO going to prison. Even worse than that, when they pay for instance. I’ve got a list right here. It’s got GlaxoSmithKline, three billion, Pfizer, 2.3 billion, Johnson & Johnson, two billion. These are settlements of criminal and sometimes false claims act prosecutions as well as civil prosecutions and they are settling. They’re settling where the end pusher, which could be a pharmaceutical. It could be a place that is simply distributing the drugs like a pharmacy or the doctor who is pushing it. I am finding no punishment for those individuals, even though the anti kickback statute punishes both sides supposedly.
What we’re seeing is a prosecution resulting only in civil and criminal penalties in the dollars and cents and nothing more that I can see. I’m just not seeing it being very effective because all these big pharma companies are continuing to spend the money. They’re seeing an impact on their bottom line, so they have no reason to stop. If they have to pay a billion dollar fine, so be it.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a heck of a thing, Dan, where we’ve all come to self help when you don’t even feel comfortable taking a drug unless it’s been on the market for 10 years, but I tell everybody that. No reason to take it, unless it’s going to save your life. Unless you’re out of options, do not take a drug that has not been on the market for 10 years. Dan Soloway, thank you for joining me. Keep up the great work out there. Okay.
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White House tamps down expectations of additional opioid funding this year
Dec 14, 2017 | STAT News
By Lev Facher
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Thursday told reporters she was unsure when Congress would fund new initiatives specific to addressing the opioid crisis.
Sanders declined to guarantee that additional spending would be included in either a stopgap spending bill Congress is expected to approve in the coming week or a longer-term budget agreement many expect lawmakers to reach in January.
“This wasn’t a problem that happened overnight,” Sanders said. “We’re not going to be able to fix it overnight. But what we want to do is make sure that we address it and that we make it a priority for the administration.”
Her comments came in response to a STAT report detailing White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s role in organizing weekly meetings focused on the opioid crisis that include officials from roughly a dozen federal departments.
In an interview with STAT, Conway pushed back against the notion that the White House was not urging Congress to allocate more funding to address the crisis, and she declined to say how much more the White House feels would be appropriate to spend on a broader mental health and addiction crisis claiming more than 60,000 lives per year.
Sanders was also asked about proposals to spend $45 billion over the course of the next decade — a proposal included in one GOP attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and now a figure that has been included in Democratic-sponsored bills in the House and Senate.“That’s, I think, a start,” Sanders said. “But to fully address this, we want to make sure that we get it right and make sure that we really address this head on. And that’s why the president has made it such a focus and put Kellyanne and others here at the White House to really make an emphasis and make that a priority.”
Congress approved roughly $2.1 billion in spending on addiction treatment and prevention efforts in 2016. Public health experts have estimated the true cost of effectively addressing the epidemic at tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Legislators have not yet detailed plans to go further.
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Dec 15, 2017 | Vox
By German Lopez
The opioid epidemic is supposed to be an issue that President Donald Trump cares about, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said, “on an emotional, just-get-it-done level.” And Trump talked a big game about confronting the crisis on the campaign trail, promisingmore money for addiction treatment and prevention efforts.
But as the end of Trump’s first year in office nears, and despite a lot of supposed talking, planning, and coordination, the White House has done nothing of actual substance on the opioid crisis.
The latest news is that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway seems to be doubling down on the role she assumed in February or March by coordinating different federal agencies through, Lev Facher at STAT reported, a new “opioid cabinet.”
This follows yet another coordination effort in which a commission set up by the White House and led by outgoing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looked at the opioid epidemic. That group in November released its final recommendations, detailing several ways to, in particular, expand access to addiction treatment.
The opioid cabinet’s job, apparently, is to coordinate federal agencies to start getting some of these recommendations done.
Despite all of this talking and planning in the past few months, the only thing close to a significant action so far is Trump declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October. While the move will streamline some processes to hopefully get treatment to more people, the declaration got a lukewarm reaction from opioid policy experts. For one, it’s at best only a start, since it unlocks no new significant funding for the opioid epidemic.
“I’m disappointed,” Andrew Kolodny, an opioid policy expert at Brandeis University, told meat the time of Trump’s declaration and speech. “Mentioning a few helpful items … is not a plan for tackling a public health emergency. We need a plan with details, and we need an appropriation request in the billions to build a treatment system. Until effective outpatient treatment is easier to access than pain pills, heroin, and fentanyl, overdose deaths will remain at record-high levels.”
This is really the heart of the issue: Advocates are wondering where the money is. Talk is nice. But at the end of the day, the fundamental problem with the opioid epidemic is more resources are needed to address the crisis — as much as tens of billions of dollars each year, according to experts.
Time is ticking. In 2016, more than 64,000 people died of drug overdoses — more than 170 people a day, and the highest single-year overdose death toll in US history. Since 1999, more than 630,000 have died to overdoses in the US — more people than live in Baltimore. As time goes on, the death toll will keep growing — making it all the more important that the White House finally does something about it.Show us the money
The opioid epidemic goes back to the 1990s, with the release of OxyContin and mass marketing of prescription painkillers, as well as campaigns like “Pain as the Fifth Vital Sign” that pushed doctors to treat pain as a serious medical problem. This contributed to the spread of opioid painkiller misuse and addiction, which over time also led to greater use of illicitly produced opioids like heroin and fentanyl. Drug overdose deaths have climbed every year since the late ’90s as a result.
The issue has really turned into two simultaneous crises — which Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University drug policy expert, has described as the dual problems of “stock” and “flow.” On one hand, you have the current stock of opioid users who are addicted; the people in this population need treatment or they will simply find other, potentially deadlier opioids to use if they lose access to prescribed painkillers. On the other hand, you have to stop new generations of potential drug users from accessing and misusing opioids.
Addressing these crises will, experts say, require tens of billions of federal dollars. As I previously explained, we have a pretty good idea of what those resources should go to: They could be used to boost access to treatment (particularly the highly effective medication-assisted treatment), pull back lax access to opioid painkillers while keeping them accessible to patients who truly need them, and adopt harm reduction policies that mitigate the damage caused by opioids and other drugs.
Some states are attempting to seriously confront this crisis. Vermont, for example, has built a “hub and spoke” system that treats addiction as a public health issue and integrates treatment into the rest of health care. Potentially as a result, the state was the only one in New England to have a drug overdose death rate below the national average in 2015. (For more, check out my in-depth breakdown of Vermont’s system.)
But Vermont managed to build this new system in large part with federal dollars, particularly through Obamacare’s insurance expansion and a special Medicaid waiver that states can obtain through the health care law. It’s that kind of federal support that budget-strained states will need to deal with the opioid crisis.
Democrats have introduced a bill that would push in this direction, allocating $45 billion over the next 10 years. The extra money would go to funding prescription drug monitoring, improving doctors’ prescribing practices, expanding access to addiction treatment, and supporting other public health initiatives related to drug misuse and addiction, among other moves.
But the Trump administration has done nothing to support this bill or any other like it. In fact, the White House’s legislative priorities — including its budget proposal and its plan to repeal Obamacare — would actually reduce funding to the opioid crisis. And the White House has yet to fill major administration vacancies that could help address the crisis, including the permanent lead roles at the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The only good news is Conway is currently in discussions, according to STAT, with Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney about finding extra funds.
So more talking for now. At what point do we see the actual money?
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Dec 15, 2017 | KHBS (ABC)
By Ft. Smith, AR
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438177?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: several major dug manufacturers and distribute -- drug manufacturers and distributors getting hit with a lawsuit. the arkansas municipal league down played the risks of opioid painkillers the lawsuit says. the lawsuit asks for punitive damages against the companies. the drug companies have denied any wrongdoing in response to similar lawsuits.
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Dec 15, 2017 | WTVY (CBS)
By Dothan, AL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438185?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: attorneys representing houston county say they filed a federal lawsuit this week against opioid manufacturers. it alleges drug company marketing practices are causing a public health and safety cris. and, houston county-- because of those practices --- suffers economically including the cost of treating those addicted to painkillers. the montgomery firm beasley allen filed the houston county lawsuit in federal courand also filed on on behalf of the city of greenville.
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Dec 15, 2017 | WSOC (ABC)
By Charlotte, NC
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438246?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: lawmakers can't decide just how much money to give the carolinas and other states to fight the opioid early this morning department mc. congressapproved more than one billion dollars to prevent opioid addiction and train first responders. the money wouldhelp addicts get recovery care. . >> we need more consistent sustainable funding to be able to continue our efforts year after year. . >> now, a spokesman for mitch mcconnell says combatting the epidemic is a top priority for everyone. in mecklenburg county112 people died because of opioids in 2016. last monthcounty commissioners voted in a closed session to look into suing drug manufacturers and companies.
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Dec 15, 2017 | WRTF (CBS)
By Wheeling, WV
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438251?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: as the fight against opioids continues nationwide--- jefferson county has decided they've had enough. they've filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of opioid prescription painkillers. rachael studies show jefferson county has one of the highest number of opioid deaths in the state of ohio. [take vo] vo it also means major costs in terms of jail time, foster care, rehab centers, and more. commissioner thomas graham says it's finally time to ease the financial burden opioids have caused. [take sot incue: ... outcue: ... duration:0'00"] sot (dr. thomas graham, jefferson county commissioner: "we hope the corporate greed will not continue in regards to the production and distribution of some of these drugs that may have misleading information, much like the tobacco companies, in terms of how quick the addiction process is. hopefully we can get that stopped at that level.") rachael [take vo] vo the 260-page complaint names more than 20 defendants. officials say the lawsuit could take several years.
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Eyewitness News Sunrise at 4:30
Dec 15, 2017 | WTHR (NBC)
By Indianapolis (IN)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438255?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: two indiana counties and one city are now joining a lawsuit.. against pharmaceutical companies.. add ..for their alleged role in growing.. the opioidabuse crisis. add the city of bloomington.. and the counties of lake and monroe county.. have signed off to file a lawsuit. add the lawsuit will look to recover money from those companies.. to cover costs that government entities incurred.. due to the opioid epidemic. indianapolis filed a similar lawsuit in november.
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Dec 14, 2017 | KOAM (CBS)
By Joplin, MO
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438261?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: currently there is a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, if oklahoma wins, the damages could help fund the program, if not, the program is still on the chopping block. for former addicts like megan the program gave her a future."recovery is very sweet and it's very precious. life is better now and i'm a better person now than i ever was before. the importance of getting help is more then i can put into words."as for the case against opioidmanufacturers, last week, a judge denied the company's requests to dismiss the lawsuit. but attorney general mike hunter says it could take several years before we see the money from that case.
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Dec 14, 2017 | WXII (NBC)
By Greensboro, NC
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438278?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: fighting the opioid crisis has been one of the top priorities for the trump administration. the president has formed a commission on opioid abuse. one of those members is north carolina governor roy cooper. today the government took more action. homeland security officials met with the justice department for discussions with their mexican counterparts today. the u.s. and mexico are working together to combat threats from criminal organizations. they are looking for ways to disrupt drug networks and broaden security operations. >> it's an attack. it must be an attack on the entire distribution network, from the production to the manufacturer, to the distribution, to the sale in our communities and our streets. all of that, if done effectively, can begin to reverse these trends. >> right now three counties in the piedmont triad are suing 6:07 PMdrug manufacturers and distributors. in the last month, federal lawsuits have been filed. janee lewis is diving deeper into the lawsuits. >> i would buckle down for a long hard fight. >> three piedmont counties filed suit against manufacturers and distributors of opioids, alleging they have unlawfully distributed them.
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Dec 15, 2017 | KATV (ABC)
By Little Rock, AR
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438263?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: minutes before courts closed this evening, the association of arkansas counties filed a new lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors. the suit allegationed they misled doctors about the safety of the opioids and caused a health crisis in our state. it sound like more or on the way? >> here's the one that was filed today, each county in the state is expected to file their own lawsuit. it is much like the tobacco lawsuits to hold companies accountable. >> reporter: the numbers are staggers for every one hur people in the state of arkansas, they are 114 opioid prescription. that means, arkansas has more prescription than people. in some counties that rate is even higher. the drug problem plaguing many of these counties was caused by big pharma, that he says misled doctors. >> they used false data, and misinformation to market to doctors that opioids were safe.
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Dec 14, 2017 | KOLO (NBC)
By Reno, NV
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438292?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: the reno city council has voted to begin the process of suing opioid manufacturers and distributors. the lawsuit seeks to recoup money the city has spent fighting the epidemic. next month.. the city will decide whether to join in the lawsuit with las vegas... or hire a local law firm to take on the case.
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Dec 14, 2017 | WKBT (CBS)
By La Crosse, WI
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31438299?token=273f2944-d8c1-48ab-a758-a4e3a45a1e01
Rough Transcript: la crosse county officials are still deciding whether to join 48 other wisconsin counties in suing opioid manufacturers. lawsuits allege drug companies are to blame for the opioid crisis. county leaders discussed the lawsuit at yesterday's executive committee meeting. they want to figure out how many resources the county would need to commit before making a final decision. a drug commonly used to reverse opioid overdoses is being made available on nine university of wisconsin campuses. the u-w system is partnering with the pharmaceutical company adapt pharma' to supply narcan to campuses... including u-w la crosse. the u-w-l campus police department says it has been using narcan as a standard tool for about 18 months... but the new partnership adds another way to get the drug free of charge. "right now, knock on wood, we have not had any situations that we've had to use narcan. it's because of things that have happened i9n the past, that was one of the reasons why we wanted to make sure we had it as a tool." adapt pharma' says it has brought narcan to more than 200 campuses in the u-s since its partnership program launched in april.
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