Preview Newsletter

Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report - 12/22/17

Midwest (IL, IN, MI, MN, OH)

5 suburban counties suing drug companies over opioid epidemic
Dec 21, 2017 | Chicago Tribune (IL)/AP
By Ted Gregory

Five suburban counties in Illinois filed lawsuits Thursday against several pharmaceutical companies, joining a growing nationwide effort to hold drug manufacturers accountable for the opioid epidemic.
Suburban counties sue drug companies over opioid overdose deaths
Dec 21, 2017 | Chicago Sun Times (IL)
By Staff

Five counties in suburban Chicago filed lawsuits Thursday against manufacturers of highly addictive opioids they say have caused thousands of overdose deaths in the state.
5 Suburban Counties Suing Pharmaceutical Companies Over Opioid Crisis
Dec 21, 2017 | WTTW (IL)
By Brandis Friedman

Five suburban counties are taking Big Pharma to court over the opioid crisis that's killed thousands of Chicago area drug users in the last six years.
McHenry County sues drugmakers over opioid epidemic
Dec 22, 2017 | Northwest Herald (IL)
By Megan Jones

McHenry County is one of five suburban counties in Illinois that joined a growing trend across the U.S. to sue the biggest pharmaceutical manufacturers to try to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of opioid addiction.
Several Northern Illinois Counties File Lawsuits Against Big Pharma
Dec 21, 2017 | Northern Public Radio (IL)
By Guy Stephens

Several Chicago collar counties are filing lawsuits against some of the country's biggest pharmaceutical companies for contributing to the opioid crisis.
Several counties in Illinois sue drug companies over opioids
Dec 21, 2017 | WLS (IL) / AP
By Craig Wall

Several counties in Illinois are suing pharmaceutical companies and physicians over the consequences of excessive opioid use.
Will County sues drugmakers over opioid epidemic
Dec 22, 2017 | The Herald News
By Megan Jones

Will County is one of five suburban counties in Illinois that joined a growing trend across the U.S. to sue the biggest opioid pharmaceutical manufacturers in an attempt to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of addiction.
5 Illinois Counties Sue Drug Companies Over Rampant Opioid Use
Dec 21, 2017 | Wheaton Patch (IL)
By Caitlin Ketel

Five Illinois counties are collectively going after painkiller manufacturers in an attempt to curb the monumental effect opioids have had on the region and the nation. DuPage, Kane, Will and McHenry County state's attorneys spoke in a press conference Thursday about their lawsuits against 13 pharmaceutical companies and three doctors. Lake County joined the coalition Thursday morning by filing a similar lawsuit.
Suburban counties sue opioid drug makers over overdose deaths
Dec 21, 2017 | Daily Herald (IL)
By James Fuller

Calling doctors, pharmacists and patients victims of "a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign," prosecutors from five suburban counties filed lawsuits Thursday naming drug companies as the source of thousands of opioid overdose deaths in Illinois.
Local state’s attorneys sue drug companies over opioids
Dec 21, 2017 | WGN (IL)
By Bill Kissinger & Julian Crews

Several state's attorneys from the Chicago area have come together to sue drug companies over the opioid crisis.
Allen County, Fort Wayne take action against opioid distributors and producers
Dec 21, 2017 | Greater Fort Wayne Business Journal (IN)
By Lucretia Cardenas

Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne are both taking legal action against distributors and producers of opioids, joining a number of counties and municipalities taking similar actions.
Detroit Files Suit Against Opioid Manufacturers
Dec 21, 2017 | The Fix
By Kelly Burch

Detroit is the latest city to sue opioid manufacturers, joining forces with nearby Macomb County to launch a lawsuit that includes many Michigan cities to attempt to stop pharmaceutical companies from making false or misleading marketing claims.
Dakota County to join lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Dec 22, 2017 | Hastings Star Gazette (MN)
By Michelle Wirth

Dakota County will join several Minnesota counties in taking action against pharmaceutical companies and distributors in the sale and manufacture of opioid drugs.
Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe sues drug companies over opioids
Dec 22, 2017 | Pioneer Press (MN)
By Grace Pastoor

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a group of opioid manufacturers and distributors, alleging that the companies are responsible for high levels of addiction and overdose deaths on the reservation.
Summit County leads 21 communities in lawsuit against opioid makers, distributors
Dec 21, 2017 | Crain's Cleveland Business (OH)
By Staff

Summit County Public Health and 21 communities have filed a civil lawsuit in Summit County Court of Common Pleas against 11 manufacturers and three distributors of opioid pain medication.
Summit County, multiple entities sue opioid makers, distributors
Dec 21, 2017 | Record-Courier (OH)
By Phil Keren

Led by Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro, nearly two dozen cities, villages and townships are joining forces to take legal action against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Summit County joins 21 local communities and health department to sue opioid manufacturers and distributors
Dec 21, 2017 | Cleveland.com (OH)
By Jennifer Conn

Summit County has joined with Summit County Public Health, the city of Akron and a number of other cities, towns and communities to sue 11 manufacturers and three distributors of prescription opioid products.
Summit County communities sue drug companies over opioid epidemic
Dec 21, 2017 | Fox 8 Cleveland (OH)
By Jen Steer

More than a dozen Summit County communities filed a civil lawsuit on Wednesday against 11 opioid manufacturers and three distributors.

Southeast (FL, GA)

Delray Beach files federal lawsuit against opioid drugmakers
Dec 21, 2017 | Sun Sentinel (FL)
By Aric Chokey

Delray Beach is suing 12 major drug companies, joining nearly 200 other governments in a nationwide legal battle against the opioid industry.
Delray Beach officially takes big pharma to court over opioid epidemic
Dec 21, 2017 | WPBF (FL)
By Jimmie Johnson

The city of Delray Beach announced it is the first Florida municipality to file a federal lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry Thursday.
DeKalb County sues opioid makers over costs of addiction, deaths
Dec 21, 2017 | Atlanta Journal Constitution (GA)
By Joshua Sharpe

DeKalb County on Wednesday filed suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors and others who allegedly helped mislead the public about the dangers of the drugs.

Southwest/West (NM, UT)

New Mexico adds 3 to suit against opioid makers, wholesalers
Dec 21, 2017 | Associated Press
By Staff

The New Mexico attorney general’s office added on Wednesday three new pharmaceutical companies to a lawsuit accusing opioid manufacturers and distributors of exacerbating the state’s drug addiction crisis.
Following Salt Lake County’s lead, five more Utah counties plan suits against opioid makers
Dec 21, 2017 | The Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
By Jennifer Dobner

Just about a month ago, Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes made a pitch to county governments struggling to deal with the havoc wreaked by opioid addiction statewide: Why not sue the $11 billion pharmaceutical industry that brought the problem to Utah’s door?
Sedgwick County commissioners sue opioid distributors and manufacturers
Dec 21, 2017 | KWCH (KS)
By Staff

The Sedgwick County board of commissioners is suing more than 20 opioid distributors and manufacturers including McKesson Corporation.

Northeast

City of Ithaca looking to possibly sue opioid manufacturers for cost of opioid epidemic in community
Dec 21, 2017 | Ithaca Voice (NY)
By Jolene Almendarez

The city of Ithaca took a step Wednesday night toward possibly suing pharmaceutical companies for misleading the public about the addictive qualities of prescription opioids, a major contributing factor in the national opioid epidemic.

Commentary and FYIs

56 miles from temptation
Dec 21, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Terrence McCoy

To save their marriage, a couple living at the crossroads of pain and addiction in rural Kentucky make a desperate escape.
Wonkblog: CDC releases grim new opioid overdose figures: ‘We’re talking about more than an exponential increase’
Dec 21, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Christopher Ingram

The national opioid epidemic escalated in 2016, driven by an unprecedented surge in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates, according to new data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Opioids now kill more people than breast cancer
Dec 21, 2017 | CNN
By Nadia Kounang

More than 63,600 lives were lost to drug overdose in 2016, the most lethal year yet of the drug overdose epidemic, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Purdue, maker of OxyContin, launches major ad campaign to counter critics
Dec 22, 2017 | STAT News
By Andrew Joseph

Facing a barrage of lawsuits for its alleged role in seeding the opioid crisis, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, is countering with a public outreach campaign meant to show it is doing its part to stem the epidemic.
'Pill Mill': Doctor Indicted For Distributing 2.7 Million Opioids, Causing Five Overdose Deaths
Dec 22, 2017 | Tech Times
By Athena Chan

A Pennsylvania doctor has been formally charged for operating a "pill mill" wherein he unlawfully distributed millions of opioids to his patients, causing five overdose deaths. He allegedly prescribed opioids without a medical purpose on multiple occasions.
DeKalb County waiting to file lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 21, 2017 | Daily Chronicle (IL)
By Christopher Heimerman

DeKalb County has opted not to join the five suburban counties that joined a nationwide trend to sue the biggest opioid pharmaceutical manufacturers in an attempt to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of addiction.
Drug Enforcement Administration to Cut Opioid Production by 20 Percent in 2018
Dec 21, 2017 | The Mighty
By Erin Migdol

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced last month that they would be decreasing the number of opioids produced in 2018 by 20 percent.
North Carolina accuses drugmakers Insys of scheme to push opioid
Dec 21, 2017 | Reuters
By Nate Raymond

North Carolina sued Insys Therapeutics Inc on Thursday, accusing the pharmaceutical company of illegally pushing a powerful fentanyl-based cancer pain medicine called Subsys to boost profits amid the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Broadcast Media Coverage

Chicago Tonight
Dec 21, 2017 | WTTW (PBS)
By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534271?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
CBS 2 Morning News
Dec 22, 2017 | WBBM (CBS)
By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534409?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
News at 8:30
Dec 21, 2017 | CLTV (CLTV)
By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534276?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
WPBF 25 News at 9:00am
Dec 22, 2017 | WPBF (ABC)
By West Palm Beach, FL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534386?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
45 News Morning
Dec 22, 2017 | KSTC (KSTC)
By Minneapolis, MN

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534392?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Eyewitness News This Morning
Dec 22, 2017 | KSCW (CW)
By Wichita, KS

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534391?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Channel 2 Action News at 5:00AM
Dec 22, 2017 | WSB (ABC)
By Atlanta, GA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534415?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414

Midwest (IL, IN, MI, MN, OH)

5 suburban counties suing drug companies over opioid epidemic

Dec 21, 2017 | Chicago Tribune (IL)/AP

By Ted Gregory

Five suburban counties in Illinois filed lawsuits Thursday against several pharmaceutical companies, joining a growing nationwide effort to hold drug manufacturers accountable for the opioid epidemic.
Prosecutors in DuPage, Kane, Will, McHenry and Lake counties said in a statement that the “aggressive and fraudulent marketing of prescription opioid painkillers” has led to a “corporate-caused drug epidemic.”
Officials said they filed the actions to stem the flow of opioids into communities and hold the manufacturers accountable for the damage done, including unemployment, increased strain on social services, the tearing apart of families and crime. The lawsuits do not specify the amount of damages sought.
“The source of this crisis is not street corners,” Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim said at a Thursday news conference in Wheaton announcing the litigation. “It’s in boardrooms.”
The lawsuits noted that the companies and three physicians tied to them recognized that “blockbuster profits would continue indefinitely” if the companies could sell opioids for long-term pain relief instead of the drugs’ original role as a short-term treatment option. To achieve that goal, “they would need to convince doctors and patients that long-term opioid therapy was safe and effective,” the complaint states.
With help from consultants and public relations firms, the drug companies “executed a … strategy to reverse the long-settled understanding of the relative risks and benefits of chronic opioid therapy,” the lawsuits states. “Rather than add to the collective body of medical knowledge concerning the best ways to treat pain and improve patient quality of life, defendants instead sought to distort medical and public perception of existing scientific data.”
Prosecutors said doctors were among the victims of the drug companies’ fraud.
“The drug industry put profits before people, deliberately misleading trusted doctors who sought to help their patients manage pain,” said Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon. “This lawsuit fulfills our responsibility to hold those who misled our community about the addictiveness of opioids financially accountable.”
Among the companies named as defendants are Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Endo Health Solutions. Representatives of the companies defended their actions.
“We believe the allegations in the lawsuits against our company are both legally and factually unfounded,” Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for Janssen, said in an email. “Janssen has acted in the best interests of patients and physicians with regard to its opioid pain medicines.”
She added that “independent surveillance data” showed that Janssen opioid pain medicines “consistently have some of the lowest rates of abuse among these medications, and since 2008 the volume of Janssen opioid products always has amounted to less than 1 percent of the total prescriptions written per year for opioid medications.”
Castles Smith and other representatives of the companies also said they recognize the critical public health issues posed by opioid abuse, and that they have worked in several ways to help, such as developing non-opioid treatments and making opioid pills harder to crush, as the crushed substance can be snorted or injected.
Thursday’s suits were filed the same day that government figures were released showing that deaths in the U.S. from drug overdoses jumped by 21 percent in 2016, and, for the second consecutive year, dragged down the life expectancy of Americans.
The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.
“This is urgent and deadly,” Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Associated Press. The opioid epidemic “clearly has a huge impact on our entire society.”
Preliminary 2017 figures show the rise in overdose deaths continuing.
In Illinois, the Department of Public Health reports that more residents died from opioid-related drug overdoses in 2014 than from homicide or motor vehicle deaths. Officials at Thursday’s briefing suggested the problem has worsened since then.
Thursday’s lawsuits are among a wave of civil cases that local governments across the U.S. have filed in federal and state courts against makers and distributors of pharmaceuticals. A key turning point occurred in 2007, when Purdue settled litigation for misbranding OxyContin and agreed to pay the U.S. $635 million.
A lawsuit filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan last year against Arizona drug company Insys was settled in August for $4.45 million.
The company agreed to pay Illinois to settle allegations that it deceptively marketed and sold a prescription opioid drug for uses unapproved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Madigan said she would use the money to battle opioid abuse in the state.
Some researchers contend that painting pharmaceutical companies as “selfish promoters” and physicians as “unwitting conduits” ignores root causes of the epidemic.
In a commentary published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, three researchers reported that “eroding economic opportunity, limited drug treatment” and the evolution of pain treatment driven by greater patient demand have fed the problematic rise in opioid overdose.
“In recasting pain as a broader condition that includes economic and social disadvantage, we urge an alternative explanation for the rising demand for opioids,” wrote Nabarun Dasgupta, Leo Beletsky and Dr. Daniel Ciccarone. “Intensifying substance use may be a normal societal response to mass traumatic events, especially when experienced by people in lower socioeconomic strata.”
In a phone interview Thursday, Ciccarone noted that doctors are prescribing fewer painkillers but the death rates from opioids continue to rise. The reason, experts say, is that those cut off from prescriptions turn to illegal narcotics.
“If we think there’s a magic bullet solution in stopping the pills, then we’re sadly mistaken,” said Ciccarone, a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at University of California-San Francisco.
But Ciccarone said the “mass torts” may lead to money flowing to treatment and prevention, “and we’re certainly not opposed to that.”
Lea Minalga, who runs the St. Charles-based Hearts of Hope, a parent support group for those affected by drug addiction, said drug companies ought to be held accountable.
“They need to make restitution for the harm that they have done,” Minalga said. “I’d go as far as saying that this is a pandemic. We all have to get on board and start doing something and doing something quickly.”

Return to headline | Return to top
Suburban counties sue drug companies over opioid overdose deaths

Dec 21, 2017 | Chicago Sun Times (IL)

By Staff

Five counties in suburban Chicago filed lawsuits Thursday against manufacturers of highly addictive opioids they say have caused thousands of overdose deaths in the state.
The lawsuits were filed by the state’s attorneys from DuPage County, where a news conference was held, as well as Kane, Will, McHenry and Lake counties, the Daily Herald is reporting.
Officials did not specify the damages they are seeking but all agreed the local taxpayers pay a heavy cost for opioids — in policing, preventive programs and deaths; they put that cost in the millions, according to the Daily Herald.
The lawsuits, which are nearly identical, also want the courts to prohibit the drug companies to stop what they call 20 years of “unfair and deceptive acts and practices.”
Since 2008 in Illinois, about 11,000 people have died from opioid overdoses, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Return to headline | Return to top
5 Suburban Counties Suing Pharmaceutical Companies Over Opioid Crisis

Dec 21, 2017 | WTTW (IL)

By Brandis Friedman

Five suburban counties are taking Big Pharma to court over the opioid crisis that's killed thousands of Chicago area drug users in the last six years.
A group of States Attorneys say numerous major pharmaceutical companies marketed the drugs as safe, knowing they were not.
DuPage, Kane, McHenry, Will and Lake counties filed almost identical lawsuits in their respective counties (so state, not federal court) against numerous pharmaceutical companies, claiming the opioid crisis began almost 20 years ago.
They all filed almost identical lawsuits in their respective counties -- so state court, not federal these pharmaceutical companies.
Since 1999 the number of prescription opioid-related deaths has quadrupled while the number of people complaining about pain or needing medication for pain hasn't changed.
The counties say the pharmaceutical companies, including Abbott, Purdue, Janssen and quite a few others misrepresented the drugs’ use to doctors and patients knowing their addictive properties.
“These drugs were developed by pharmaceutical companies for cancer patients and short-term use for post-surgical pain. Doctors, believing the marketing campaigns that the drugs were safe, prescribed them to their patients for longer term use and non-cancer caused pain,” said Kane County’s State Attorney Joseph McMahon. “In many cases, they created drug addicts. It is outrageous that so many people have died because of a prescription drug that for years was marketed as safe.”
Some of the drugs we're talking about include OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin as well as other generic names include oxycodone, hydrocodone and fentanyl.
These State's Attorneys says once someone is addicted to these prescription drugs and then can no longer access them, they turn to an illegal opioid: heroin.
The suit doesn't set a specific monetary amount, because they say the damage is ongoing, though the counties make the case that each of them has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in substance abuse treatment services and emergency department services, as well as the other economic and social costs that come with victimization, lost productivity and criminal justice.
They want compensatory and punitive damages, and they point to the profits they believe the pharmaceutical companies are making off the sale of these drugs.
The complaint says that in 2012, the companies together made $8 billion.
Of that, more than $3 billion went to Purdue Pharmaceutical alone, the maker of OxyContin. The a company has been cited before.
“In 2007, the Purdue company was fined $635 million by the Food and Drug Administration because they withheld the studies that they had that showed how addictive OxyContin was. They paid that $635 million like it was coffee money, so the profits are obscene and that’s what’s driving this. The overproduction of these opioids has been publicized for years,” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said.
In a statement, Abbott Laboratories said it no longer sells any pharmaceuticals in the U.S. and discontinued co-promotion with Purdue nearly 14 years ago.
Abbott also spun-off its U.S. research-based pharma business, AbbVie back in 2013.
A spokesperson for Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson company, said in a statement, “We believe the allegations in the lawsuits against our company are both legally and factually unfounded. Janssen has acted in the best interests of patients and physicians with regard to its opioid pain medicines, which are FDA-approved and carry FDA-mandated warnings about possible risks on every product label.”
The statement goes on to say that Janssen opioid products amount to less than 1 percent of total prescriptions written per year for opioid medicines.
There are dozens of these lawsuits being filed around the country over this crisis, and the approach is being likened to one from 90s: The fight against Big Tobacco.
“The actions alleged in these complaints cost the plaintiffs, who are in reality Illinois taxpayers, millions of dollars and that cost continues to rise. The complaints filed this morning allege that for more than 20 years the defendants developed and executed a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign for opioid drugs that harkens back to the deceptive and illegal practices the tobacco industry used,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said.
Abbott says it stopped co-promoting with Purdue 14 years ago, but these attorneys say the problem is almost 20 years old.
And the complaints explain how Abbott's co-promotion arrangement with Purdue helped make OxyContin into the largest-selling opioid in the nation, and that Abbott received 25 to 30 percent of sales from1996 to 2002.
Just last week, the trade organization, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or Phrma announced a multi-year multi-million dollar initiative to address the opioid crisis, partnering with the Addiction Policy Forum to fund state and local programs.
It also introduced several proposals to tackle the problem, like limiting the supply of medications to seven days for acute pain, mandating prescriber training and eliminating coverage barriers that keep patients from accessing addiction treatment.
The counties have contracted with two law firms to act as special prosecutors in these cases.

Return to headline | Return to top
McHenry County sues drugmakers over opioid epidemic

Dec 22, 2017 | Northwest Herald (IL)

By Megan Jones

McHenry County is one of five suburban counties in Illinois that joined a growing trend across the U.S. to sue the biggest pharmaceutical manufacturers to try to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of opioid addiction.
Attorneys for McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Will and Lake counties filed separate lawsuits Thursday against several drugmakers, including Lake Bluff-based Abbott Laboratories, as well as three doctors.
County officials gathered Thursday at the DuPage County government campus to announce the lawsuits.
“Like any ill-given profit in the short term, there is an exacting cost to be paid in the long run. In McHenry County, that cost is primarily what can’t be easily quantified – the lives and health of our residents and the misery of those whose loved ones have suffered or continue to suffer from addiction,” McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said. “But it’s also the enormous civic costs that we as a county have faced as a result of and as part of our ongoing efforts to alleviate the catastrophic harm that has been done.”
Paul Hanly of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC is representing every county except Lake County. He is representing about 100 different counties across the U.S. in similar cases.
Almost 60 people have died from opioid overdoses this year in McHenry County. The lawsuit claims that the drug companies’ deceptive marketing of pain pills has led to 2.1 million Americans getting hooked on the powerful drugs, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
The counties seek an unspecified amount of damages to compensate for the money they spend each year on health care, pharmaceutical care and other services and programs for addicts.
Kenneally said no dollar amount has been set for how much each county has spent on the epidemic. The cost will be determined during the discovery process, he said.
“We expect it to be a sizable sum in the millions of dollars range,” Kenneally said.
The lawsuit specifically named Abbott Laboratories, Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Dr. Perry Fine, Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster.
“The end goal is to get the drug manufacturers to abate the public nuisance they created and to compensate all the counties for all the damages and losses that occurred and are ongoing. As we stand here today, these losses continue to mount,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin said.
The lawsuit will not be paid for with taxpayer dollars, Kenneally said.
The costs will be covered by the law firm, and if it is won, Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC will get 25 percent of the amount awarded for each county.
Hanly first sued Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, in 2003. Since then, he has represented thousands of people who became addicted to opioids through pain pills.
Purdue settled for $75 million in 2006, admitting that the company had downplayed the addictive risk of its medicine. Now, Hanly is setting his sights on a bigger settlement, as he represents cities and counties in five states across the U.S.
Kenneally compared the suits that are popping up every month with the litigation against the tobacco industry that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1998.
The lawsuit says that companies knew opioids were addictive and too debilitating for long-term use, and that the effects of opioids wear off after prolonged use, requiring increased dosages.
Controlled studies on the safety and efficacy of opioids were limited to short-term use no longer than 90 days, but defendants created a false perception of safety to both medical professionals and the public, the lawsuit says.
Companies used a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign that began in the late 1990s, became more aggressive in 2006 and continues today, the suit claims.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said the lawsuit will take several years, and he expects the litigation will be contested, but the counties are prepared to see the suit through to its end.
Kenneally said he thinks other counties across the state will join the legal effort.
Uptick in opioids
The number of opioid overdoses has increased by 17 percent since 2016.
There have been 58 deaths attributed to opioid overdose in McHenry County in 2017 –about 80 percent of all overdose deaths in the county this year. Four deaths still are being investigated as possible overdoses, McHenry County Coroner Anne Majewski said.
Of the opioid overdoses, almost half were caused by heroin, with a third from prescribed opioid medication alone or with other drugs, and a quarter from fentanyl, an opioid that can be 100 to 10,000 times stronger than morphine.
There were 46 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, Majewski said.
Although Americans represent 4.6 percent of the world’s population, they consume 80 percent of the opioids supplied around the world, the suit states.
Molly DeGroh, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Centegra Hospital – McHenry, said she has seen more babies born with opioid addiction because of their mothers’ drug use. In 2016, 27 babies were treated in immediate care nursery for withdrawal, DeGroh said.
“These babies often stay in our nurseries well past the time their mothers are discharged and struggle with neonatal abstinence syndrome, with symptoms such as difficulty to settle the baby, problems gaining weight and eating, skin rash and seizures,” DeGroh said.
Lack of resources
Fighting the epidemic has been costly in McHenry County, where public funds increasingly are needed for substance abuse counseling, emergency services, hospitalization costs and law enforcement agencies.
Kenneally said the county would use any money from the lawsuit to provide more resources for addicts.
“We’d like to acquire these damages not to line our own pockets but to use them to develop resources within the community to alleviate the damage that has been done,” Kenneally said.
One of the next goals for Kenneally is establishing a local detox center. McHenry County has no recovery beds for people just recovering from drugs.

Return to headline | Return to top
Several Northern Illinois Counties File Lawsuits Against Big Pharma

Dec 21, 2017 | Northern Public Radio (IL)

By Guy Stephens

Several Chicago collar counties are filing lawsuits against some of the country's biggest pharmaceutical companies for contributing to the opioid crisis.
Officials from DuPage, Kane, McHenry, Lake and Will Counties said Thursday they are seeking millions of dollars in damages.
McHenry County State's Attorney Patrick Kenneally said the effects of the opioid crisis have been devastating for his county, both in human terms and financially.
He says the companies poured money into generating articles, classes and other means to promote their products.
"All of which were successful," he said, "in putting into the minds of physicians that, 'Hey, these new type[s] of derivatives of morphine - Oxycontin, Hydrocodone - are not addictive.'"
Kenneally said the companies must be held accountable for that.
"Through the deceptive practices of these companies," he said, "doctors became comfortable prescribing these things. There was a flood of prescriptions throughout the United States, and that has been a really large part of the opioid epidemic that we're facing right now."
The suits include names like Purdue, Abbott, and Johnson & Johnson. Several doctors were also named.
Kenneally said any money received through the lawsuits would go toward programs to help those affected and to help prevent others from becoming victims of the crisis.
Kenneally acknowledges that despite having what he calls a strong case, the money may be a long time coming. Other lawsuits of this kind have taken years, even decades, to resolve.
The list of those named in the lawsuits includes: Purdue Pharma L.P.; Purdue Pharma Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company Inc.; Abbott Laboratories; Abbott Laboratories Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.; Cephalon Inc.; Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Dr. Perry Fine; Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster.

Return to headline | Return to top
Several counties in Illinois sue drug companies over opioids

Dec 21, 2017 | WLS (IL) / AP

By Craig Wall

Several counties in Illinois are suing pharmaceutical companies and physicians over the consequences of excessive opioid use.
State's Attorneys from DuPage, Lake, Will, McHenry and Kane counties are banding together to file lawsuits against several major pharmaceutical companies and several doctors alleging they are to blame for the opioid crisis that has claimed hundreds of lives in recent years.

The lawsuits accuse the defendants of using a deliberate and intentionally fraudulent marketing campaigns to encourage the use of opioids for long term pain management. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, opioids contributed to nearly 1,200 deaths in 2016.

Kane County State's Attorney Joe McMahon said prescription pain killers like OxyContin were originally developed for cancer patients for short term pain treatment. Doctors, believing the drugs were safe, prescribed them and in many cases created drug addicts, McMahon said. The States Attorneys said many of those prescription drug addicts eventually turn to heroin.
The lawsuits allege the defendants sought to create a false perception in the minds of doctors, patients, health care providers and health care payers that using opioids to treat chronic pain was safe, and the drugs' benefits outweighed the risks.

"The source of this crisis is not on street corners but in board rooms," said Mike Nerheim, Lake County State's Attorney.

The lawsuits are seeking compensatory and punitive damages for the millions of dollars that the counties spend each year to combat drug related crimes, and the public nuisance created by the companies' deceptive marketing campaigns. The lawsuits also cite the millions of dollars spent each year for health care costs from prescription opioid dependency.

The marketing practices used by the pharmaceutical companies "misrepresented the danger" according to Chris Lauzen, Kane County Board Chairman, who likened these campaigns to the ones used by tobacco companies.

There will be no legal costs to taxpayers. Private law firms who are representing the counties will receive 25 percent of whatever money is recovered as payment. The lawsuits are expected to take years to wind through the courts.

"We don't expect to lose," said James Glasgow, Will County State's Attorney.

Purdue Pharma L.P.; Purdue Pharma, Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company, Inc.; Abbott Laboratories; Abbott Laboratories, Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.; Cephalon, Inc.; Johnson& Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Dr. Perry Fine; Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster, are all defendants in the lawsuit filed by Kankakee County.

Return to headline | Return to top
Will County sues drugmakers over opioid epidemic

Dec 22, 2017 | The Herald News

By Megan Jones

Will County is one of five suburban counties in Illinois that joined a growing trend across the U.S. to sue the biggest opioid pharmaceutical manufacturers in an attempt to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of addiction.
Attorneys for Will, McHenry,
DuPage, Kane and Lake counties filed separate lawsuits Thursday against several pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Lake Bluff-based Abbott Labs, and three doctors.
County officials gathered Thursday at the DuPage County Government Campus to announce the lawsuits.
“The end goal is to get the drug manufacturers to abate the public nuisance they created and to compensate all the counties for all the damages and losses that occurred and are ongoing. As we stand here today, these losses continue to mount,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin said.
Paul Hanly of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC is representing every county except Lake County. He is currently is representing about 100 counties around the U.S. on similar cases.
More than 50 people died of accidental opioid overdoses in Will County in 2015. By comparison, 84 have died from accidental opioid overdose deaths in 2017.
The lawsuit claims that the drug companies’ deceptive marketing of pain pills has led to 2.1 million Americans having an opioid use disorder, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
“In Will County, we have creative law enforcement agencies and community organizations that have developed cutting-edge approaches to battling the opioid crisis, but we have still seen the number of overdose deaths increase dramatically over the years,” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said. “It is time we take steps to begin holding pharmaceutical companies accountable for practices that created the demand for these deadly narcotics, as well as their failure to disclose damaging research that demonstrated their highly addictive nature.”
The counties seek an unspecified amount of damages they spend each year on health care, pharmaceutical care and necessary services and programs for addicts.
McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said no dollar amount has been set for how much each county has spent on the epidemic and the cost will be found during the discovery process.
“We expect it to be a sizable sum in the millions of dollars range,”
Kenneally said.
The lawsuit specifically named Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Dr. Perry Fine, Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster.
The lawsuit will not be paid for with taxpayer dollars, Kenneally said. The costs will be covered by the law firm, and if they win, Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC will receive 25 percent of the amount awarded for each county.
Hanly first sued Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, in 2003. Since then, he has represented thousands of pain patients who became addicted to opioids through pain pills.
Purdue settled for $75 million in 2006, admitting the company had downplayed the addictive risk of its medicine. Now, Hanly is setting his sights on a bigger settlement, as he represents cities and counties in five states across the U.S.
Kenneally compared the lawsuits that are popping up every month to the litigation against the tobacco industry that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1998.
The lawsuit says companies knew opioids were addictive and too debilitating for long-term use and that the effects of opioids wear off after prolonged use, requiring increased dosages.
Glasgow said the lawsuit was long overdue.
“None of the gentlemen standing up here like to lose, so we don’t expect to lose,” Glasgow said. “When you talk about cost to the taxpayers, every day that goes by that we are not pushing this lawsuit, the cost to law enforcement, or losing your son or daughter – you can’t put a price on that.”
In 2007, the Purdue company was fined $635 million by the Food and Drug Administration because it withheld the studies that showed how addictive Oxycontin was, he added.
“They paid that amount like it was coffee money,” Glasgow said. “The profits are obscene and that is what is driving this.”
Controlled studies on the safety and efficacy of opioids were limited to short-term use no longer than 90 days, but defendants created a false perception of safety to both medical professionals and the public, the suit says.
Companies used a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign that began in the late 1990s, became more aggressive in 2006 and continues today, the suit states.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said the lawsuit will take several years and he expects the litigation will be contested, but the counties are prepared to see the suit through to its end.
Kenneally said he thinks other counties across the state will join.
Uptick in opioids
With 10 days left in 2017, the number of opioid overdoses has increased by 17 percent since 2016.
There have been 58 deaths attributed to opioid overdoses in McHenry County in 2017, about 80 percent
of all overdose deaths in the county this year. Four deaths are still being investigated as possible overdoses, McHenry County Coroner Anne Majewski said.
Of the opioid overdoses, almost half were caused by heroin, with a third from prescribed opioid medication alone or with other drugs, and a quarter from fentanyl.
There were 46 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, Majewski said.
While Americans represent 4.6 percent of the world’s population, they consume 80 percent of the opioids supplied around the world, the suit states.
Molly DeGroh, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Centegra Hospital – McHenry, said she has seen more babies born with opioid addiction due to their mothers’ drug use. In 2016, 27 babies were treated in immediate care nursery for withdrawal, DeGroh said.
“These babies often stay in our nurseries well past the time their mothers are discharged and struggle with neonatal abstinence syndrome, with symptoms such as difficulty to settle the baby, problems gaining weight and eating, skin rash and seizures,” DeGroh said.
Lack of resources
Fighting the epidemic has been costly in McHenry County, where public funds are increasingly needed for opioid prescriptions, substance abuse counseling, emergency services and hospitalization costs.
Kenneally said the county will use any money from the lawsuit to provide more resources for addicts.
“We’d like to acquire these damages, not to line our own pockets but to use them to develop resources within the community to alleviate the damage that has been done,” Kenneally said.
One of the next goals for Kenneally is establishing a local detox center. McHenry County has no recovery beds for someone just getting off drugs.
Laura Crain with the McHenry County Substance Abuse Coalition said the conversation is in a health system’s hands because detox requires medical supervision.
People who use the A Way Out program are sent to Gateway Foundation in Gurnee and Lake Villa, Rosecrance in Rockford, SHARE/Leyden Family Services in Hoffman Estates, Lutheran Social Services of Illinois in Chicago or Haymarket Center in Chicago.
“Our goal is to develop long-term recovery beds within the county and we think one of the best ways to address and really ensure sobriety is a more longer-term program,” Kenneally said. “Not to take anything away from the other programs, but we think a longer-term peer-driven program is not only economically sustainable but also highly effective.”
Crain said a recovery center would allow people to stay in treatment longer than 30 days before they are out on their own.
Rosecrance runs a 16-person sober living home in Woodstock, New Directions Addiction Recovery Services has two homes with hopes to have two more open by the end of 2018, and a few other independent homes that are not licensed, Crain said.
Crain said she hopes to be able to change the conditions that led people to drugs, such as not being able to find housing or employment, because each specific drug will always change.
“We are looking at it as a bigger solution and need to look beyond the drug itself because in all honesty we know meth is starting to come into our community. Once we get a handle on opioids, they’ll be a new drug,” Crain said.

Return to headline | Return to top
5 Illinois Counties Sue Drug Companies Over Rampant Opioid Use

Dec 21, 2017 | Wheaton Patch (IL)

By Caitlin Ketel

Five Illinois counties are collectively going after painkiller manufacturers in an attempt to curb the monumental effect opioids have had on the region and the nation. DuPage, Kane, Will and McHenry County state's attorneys spoke in a press conference Thursday about their lawsuits against 13 pharmaceutical companies and three doctors. Lake County joined the coalition Thursday morning by filing a similar lawsuit.
The counties allege the drug companies, which include Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, of being the catalyst for the nation's opioid epidemic. Purdue created OxyContin, which was approved by the FDA in the mid-90s. The four counties are seeking relief, including compensatory and punitive damages for the millions of dollars they spend each year to combat drug-related crimes, and the public nuisance created by the crisis. The amount which they are seeking was not specified.
In DuPage County, 78 people died in 2016 from overdosing on heroin, fentanyl or a combination of both. That number has climbed to 81 so far this year. DuPage County Board Chair Dan Cronin said since 1999, prescription opioid deaths had risen fourfold, even though the need for these types of pain medication isn't there.
DuPage County State's Attorney Bob Berlin called those numbers "staggering." The lawsuits are an attempt, he said, to hold companies responsible "for the enormous cost, rise in crime rates, escalated social issues, and increased cost in productivity in the workplace incurred by each of these five counties."
Berlin compared drug manufacturers' "coordinated and sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign" for opioid drugs to that of the tobacco industry's efforts to push its products.
All five state's attorneys spoke to the detriments of opioids, and how they're individually expanding the fight beyond the streets and into the pharmaceutical industry.
"Over the last 6 years, 257 people have died in Kane County from opiate use," said Kane County State's Attorney Joseph McMahon. He added that these prescription drugs are aggressively marketed to physicians.
In Will County, 77 people died of opioid-related overdoses in 2016. So far this year, 75 had died of heroin/fentanyl overdoses as of Dec. 19.
Nationwide, 2016 was the deadliest year on record for overdose deaths. More than 63,600 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, and about two thirds of those deaths were attributed to opioid-related overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. More than 2,400 died in Illinois.
Prosecutors expect the litigation to be contested. They also expect more counties from Illinois to join in, and some have already filed similar complaints.
Taxpayers are not going to cover direct costs for the litigation. Instead, the costs will be covered by outside council, officials confirmed. The council they've partnered with— Meyers & Flowers and Simmons Hanly Conroy— will receive 25 percent of what they have recovered in the lawsuits, which are expected to last years.
Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow nodded toward the other state's attorneys behind him.
"None of the gentlemen standing up here with me like to lose. So we don't expect to lose."

Return to headline | Return to top
Suburban counties sue opioid drug makers over overdose deaths

Dec 21, 2017 | Daily Herald (IL)

By James Fuller

Calling doctors, pharmacists and patients victims of "a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign," prosecutors from five suburban counties filed lawsuits Thursday naming drug companies as the source of thousands of opioid overdose deaths in Illinois.
The lawsuits seek an unspecified amount of damages. However, the state's attorneys agreed the financial cost to local taxpayers for policing, preventive programs and the actual deaths is in the millions of dollars.
The nearly identical lawsuits also seek a court order that would prohibit drug manufacturers from continuing what the attorneys described as 20 years of "unfair and deceptive acts and practices."
DuPage County State's Attorney Bob Berlin said the 16 companies and individuals named in the suit knew long-term use of their prescription painkillers led to addiction but hid the risks in the name of making billions of dollars in profits.
The defendants include the makers and marketers of well-known drugs such as OxyContin and Percocet. The companies include Purdue Pharma L.P., Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., Cephalon Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Endo Health Solutions Inc., and several related companies.
"They created an epidemic of addiction," Berlin said. "It has severely impacted public health on every geographic and demographic level."
Berlin and other county officials said overdose deaths would decrease in Illinois if the lawsuits are successful. Those deaths total 11,000 people since 2008, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. DuPage is at 81 opioid overdose deaths in 2017.
Lake County State's Attorney Michael Nerheim said his county has more than 70 overdose deaths this year. That number would be larger if not for prevention efforts.
Nerheim said first responders have used 206 doses of naloxone to reverse overdose deaths in the field.
Lake County also has a program that's received more than 50,000 text messages from area youths seeking addiction treatment. The county has collected more than 13,000 pounds of unused medication and placed more than 300 people in treatment through a drug court diversion program.
"In spite of all those efforts, this epidemic continues to grow," Nerheim said. "The source of this crisis is not on street corners; it's in boardrooms."
Kane County led the way on the lawsuits. Officials there announced intentions to sue the drug companies in October. That decision came only after some skepticism by Kane County Board Chairman Chris Lauzen.
In August, Lauzen expressed concern that litigation attorneys might be trying to capitalize on widespread desperation to solve the opioid epidemic with lawsuits that would enrich them but not the actual victims of addiction.
Lauzen signaled a change in his thinking Thursday.
"I value the business community and strongly believe government should stay out of the way of business progress," Lauzen said. "But when a company or companies conspire to create marketing proven to encourage addiction, increase crime, add hundreds of millions (of dollars) to our tax burden and destroy young lives, it's government's duty and responsibility to take action."
Local governments may face obstacles from state officials who don't agree with pointing the finger at those businesses.
Don Kauerauf, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, told reporters this month the problem doesn't have a single source.
"As much as we try to place the blame on any one industry, say the pharmaceutical companies are drivers, you can't do that," Kauerauf said. "You can't blame all of one sector. There's a lot of factors."
He pointed to insurance companies as another factor. Many insurers cover the costs of pain medication but reject alternative, but more costly options, such as physical therapy, he said.
State health department stats show opioid overdoses killed 1,888 people in 2016 -- more than homicides or car accidents. Illinois' opioid death toll is up 57 percent from 2014. Overdoses are now the leading cause of death for people younger than 50 in Illinois.

Return to headline | Return to top
Local state’s attorneys sue drug companies over opioids

Dec 21, 2017 | WGN (IL)

By Bill Kissinger & Julian Crews

Several state's attorneys from the Chicago area have come together to sue drug companies over the opioid crisis.
The lawsuit names nearly a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including several in the Chicago area, claiming they have caused harm in the marketing and distribution of highly addictive opioid medications.
The Centers for Disease Control reports 42,000 overdose deaths from opioids in 2016. That's an increase of 28% from the year before.

Return to headline | Return to top
Allen County, Fort Wayne take action against opioid distributors and producers

Dec 21, 2017 | Greater Fort Wayne Business Journal (IN)

By Lucretia Cardenas

Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne are both taking legal action against distributors and producers of opioids, joining a number of counties and municipalities taking similar actions.
In a unanimous vote Dec. 15, Allen County Commissioners agreed to file a suit that aims to reimburse public entities for financial loss related to opioid related autopsies, emergency response, naloxone supplies and other expenses incurred to combat the epidemic, according to county officials. The lawsuit, which had yet to be filed, targets 11 pharmaceutical companies and opioid distributors. The law firm being used is Crueger Dickinson, based in Milwaukee.
“Opioid addiction is an issue that affects many different phases of our county,” said Commissioner Therese Brown. “Not only has it put additional burdens on law enforcement and health providers, but it’s affecting many employers as their workers and potential hires succumb to opioid abuse and addiction. This lawsuit is a move toward addressing this major problem.”
Fort Wayne plans to file a public nuisance lawsuit against the country’s three largest wholesale drug distributors – Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp.
The three companies together control more than 80 percent of the prescription opioid market, according to a city statement. The city hired Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP based in Indianapolis as lead counsel to pursue the effort to hold the companies responsible. Funds recovered through a successful lawsuit would be used to assist the community in maximizing resources in overcoming the opioid epidemic through education, treatment and law enforcement initiatives.
“It’s our duty to serve and protect the public,” Mayor Tom Henry said. “Today’s action demonstrates our ongoing commitment to doing all we can to reduce the negative impact that drugs are having on individuals, families, health care, law enforcement and the judicial system.”
According to statistics from the Fort Wayne Police Department, from Jan. 1 through Dec. 1, city emergency has responded to 94 overdose deaths, with 50 pending, and 1,130 overdose runs (98 in November alone), resulting in a cost of $90,000 in man-hours. Emergency personnel has administered narcan/naloxone to more than 500 patients during that time period.

Return to headline | Return to top
Detroit Files Suit Against Opioid Manufacturers

Dec 21, 2017 | The Fix

By Kelly Burch

Detroit is the latest city to sue opioid manufacturers, joining forces with nearby Macomb County to launch a lawsuit that includes many Michigan cities to attempt to stop pharmaceutical companies from making false or misleading marketing claims.
"Opioids—profligately sold to treat virtually any ailment—have destroyed the lives of countless men and women who had the misfortune of suffering from back pain, arthritis, workplace injuries and a countless array of other relatively minor and term-limited painful conditions," the lawsuit reads, according to MLive.
The suit names OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma, which has been sued by many other municipalities over its claims that the drug provided 12-hour pain relief. In order to give patients 12 hours of relief, Purdue allegedly pressured doctors to use higher doses, increasing the likelihood of dependency and addiction. Purdue has already paid federal fines related to OxyContin.
Cephalon, Teva and Endo, other pharmaceutical companies, are also targeted by the lawsuit. The suit also names pharmacies including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid and Costco, alleging that their distribution system had a "pattern of racketeering."
"It's not that we want to profit from litigation, we want to stop it through litigation,” said Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, who announced the lawsuit alongside Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, according to The Detroit Free Press.
Last year, opioid deaths rose 134% in Macomb County. In Detroit, opioid overdoses kill about 300 people each year.
"There is a financial burden, but there's a bigger human burden," Duggan said. "I've heard the story from so many people. A loved one goes into the hospital for a surgery or some other medical procedure and they end up with an addiction that can severely damage their life."
The problem was perpetuated by the multi-million dollar industry, said Mark Bernstein, a lawyer who is working on the lawsuit. "They were telling the doctors that opioids are not addictive or minimally addictive,” he said. "There were two addictions here. The addiction of the patients, but also the addiction to profits by these drug companies.”
In October, two other Michigan counties launched similar lawsuits. Wayne County Executive Warren Evans said at the time that opioid addiction is a "full-blown health crisis from which the drug companies have made billions.”
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that there are far more drugs out there that have been prescribed legally than any one could ever use in any constructive, logical, or medical way," Evans said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Dakota County to join lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

Dec 22, 2017 | Hastings Star Gazette (MN)

By Michelle Wirth

Dakota County will join several Minnesota counties in taking action against pharmaceutical companies and distributors in the sale and manufacture of opioid drugs.
"Companies that manufacture, distribute and market these drugs are causing a cycle of destruction in Dakota County," Dakota County attorney James Backstrom said.
The lawsuit will seek changes in pharmaceutical marketing practices for opioids, preventative public education, training of non-healthcare professionals to expand the ability to stop the crisis, as well as monetary relief for Dakota County including compensatory and punitive damages for the tax dollars spent each year to combat the opioid public health crisis.
There were 26 opioid-involved overdose deaths in 2016 in Dakota County, double what the county saw 10 years ago. Dakota County Sheriff Tim Leslie said the numbers are misleadingly low because the figures do not include deaths of people whose addiction began with opioids and then died from an overdose caused by an illegal street drug.
"Our jails are filled with people who are committing crimes in Dakota County to feed their addiction, but we cannot arrest our way out of this problem," Leslie said.
Dakota County commissioner Mike Slavik said the deceptive marketing of pharmaceutical companies and distributors is inflicting destruction physically, socially and financially.
"This epidemic is substantially straining public resources such as health care, criminal justice, first responders, public safety and social services," Slavik said.
Opioids include medications to treat severe short-term pain. According to a Dakota County press release Dec. 12, the county said irresponsible and fraudulent marketing campaigns by the pharmaceutical industry touted opioids as safe, non-addictive pain relievers that could be safely used long-term by those with chronic pain conditions.
On Nov. 30, about 20 other Minnesota counties announced civil action against major pharmaceutical companies for the sale and manufacture of opioids. Slavik and Dakota County attorney James Backstrom attended the press conference in support of the counties.
Minnesota is not the only state to file against pharmaceutical companies that manufacture and distribute opioids, including several Wisconsin counties.
The Motley Rice firm has been retained to represent Dakota County and will work with the Twin Cities firm of Briol & Benson on a contingent fee basis. The law firms will only receive compensation and reimbursement of costs if the lawsuit is successful.

Return to headline | Return to top
Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe sues drug companies over opioids

Dec 22, 2017 | Pioneer Press (MN)

By Grace Pastoor

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a group of opioid manufacturers and distributors, alleging that the companies are responsible for high levels of addiction and overdose deaths on the reservation.
A suit names 23 defendants including manufacturers Purdue Pharma Inc., Cephalon Inc., and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., as well as distributors The McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health, Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.
Leech Lake’s lawsuit echoes accusations made in other lawsuits announced by multiple Minnesota county attorneys in November, but the band said its suit is not connected to those filed by the counties.
The band’s public relations manager Michael Chosa said no one could comment on the lawsuit, but issued a release with a quote from Leech Lake Tribal Chairman Faron Jackson, Sr.
“The crisis caused by the proliferation of opiates throughout our communities is the newest threat to our way of life,” Jackson said in the release. “We hope this lawsuit will help to bring further attention to this major issue and ultimately make sure the major opioid manufacturers, who have put their corporate profit margins over the lives of our people, are held accountable for their actions.”
The 134-page complaint levels 10 counts against the various companies.
All of the defendants are accused of negligence and negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, common law fraud, unlawful trade practices, uniform deceptive trade practices, making false statements in advertisements, violating Minnesota’s Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act and of violating the Lanham Act, which states that anyone who misrepresents the “nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin” of a product is liable for damage caused by the misrepresentation.
All of the opioid distributors names in the lawsuit are also accused of causing a public nuisance, and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and the McKesson Corp. are accused of negligence per se.
Court documents outline the impact the nationwide opioid epidemic has had on the Leech Lake band, an attributed the consequences to the companies’ “unlawful conduct.”
According to data presented in the complaint, the country’s Native American communities, and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in particular, have been disproportionately impacted by the epidemic. Minnesota ranks first in the nation for overdose deaths of Native people, the complaint said.
The Leech Lake reservation sits in four northern Minnesota counties: Beltrami, Cass, Hubbard and Itasca. In 2000, no one in any of those counties died from opioid-related overdoses, but in 2015, seven people in the area died.
Nearby reservations are also seeking consequences of opioid addiction. This week, both White Earth and Red Lake officials issued statements warning about the dangers of heroin and a rise in overdoses. According to a release from White Earth, two people died within 48 hours there. In Red Lake, a person who overdosed was “dumped” at a hospital.
According to the CDC, addiction to prescription pain medication is one of the strongest risk factors for heroin addiction.
The suit acknowledged that opioid painkillers can be used for short-term acute pain or for end-of-life care, but alleges that manufacturers lied about the potential for opioid addiction in patients who used the drugs long term.
“The manufacturers aggressively pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, falsely representing to doctors that patients would only rarely succumb to drug addiction,” the complaint reads. “These pharmaceutical companies aggressively advertised to and persuaded doctors to prescribe highly addictive, dangerous opioids and turned patients into drug addicts for their own corporate profit. Such actions were intentional and/or unlawful.”
The conduct of the manufacturers and distributors have put a financial burden on Leech Lake, complaint said.The band is seeking economic damages, the amount of which would be determined at a trial.
Spokespersons with Purdue and Janssen both denied the lawsuit’s allegations in email statements on Thursday. A representative with Teva provided a statement that did not reference the Leech Lake lawsuit. When asked for a more specific comment spokesperson Denise Bradley declined to provide further information.
A request for comment to a McKesson representative also prompted a response from the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, a trade association that represents distributors including McKesson, Cardinal and AmeriSource Bergen.
The Alliance provided a statement that was at least partly identical to one made after the Minnesota county attorneys announced their lawsuits in November.
“We 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,” the statement, attributed to HDA spokesperson John Parker, said. “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.”
Robert Josephson, a media contact with Purdue, said in an email statement that the company “vigorously” denies the allegations and looks forward to presenting its defense. Johnson said Purdue products account for 2 percent of total opioid prescriptions.
Jessica Castles Smith with Janssen also said the company believes the allegations are “legally and factually unfounded.”
“Janssen has acted in the best interests of patients and physicians with regard to its opioid pain medicines,” her email statement said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Summit County leads 21 communities in lawsuit against opioid makers, distributors

Dec 21, 2017 | Crain's Cleveland Business (OH)

By Staff

Summit County Public Health and 21 communities have filed a civil lawsuit in Summit County Court of Common Pleas against 11 manufacturers and three distributors of opioid pain medication.
Summit County executive Ilene Shapiro made the announcement on Thursday, Dec. 21. Shapiro in October declared a state of emergency in the county because of the opioid epidemic.
The county said that in the past five years, it estimates it has spent $66 million to address opioid-related issues, according to a news release. Shapiro estimates that over a 10-year period, the county will spend more than $150 million.
The lawsuit alleges "that through these companies' unfair and deceptive marketing and distribution of opioids, they created a public nuisance, violated the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices and Deceptive Trade Practices Acts, acted in gross negligence, violated the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act, and created injury through their actions," according to the release.
Law firms Brennan, Manna & Diamond LLC and Motley Rice LLC are working with county and the plaintiffs on a contingency basis, meaning no upfront taxpayer dollars will go to the cost of the suit, the release said.
The other plaintiffs are the communities of Akron, Barberton, Boston Heights, Boston Township, Clinton, Copley Township, Coventry Township, Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Green, Lakemore, Mogadore, Munroe Falls, Norton, Peninsula, Richfield Village, Silver Lake, Springfield Township, Stow, Tallmadge and Valley Fire District.
The suit names as defendants 11 manufacturers: Purdue Pharma L.P.; Purdue Pharma Inc.; Purdue Frederick Co. Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA; Cephalon Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and Insys Therapeutics Inc.
The three distributors named as defendants are McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc.
The plaintiffs also assert that the makers of the drugs "deceptively created the mass market for prescription opioids, and the distributor defendants unlawfully flooded it."
"This suit is about accountability. Those who we allege are responsible for creating this crisis must be held responsible for, and help shoulder the costs of the enormous harm they have created," Barberton mayor Bill Judge said in a statement.
Filed in state court, the lawsuit only alleges violation of state law, the release said.
"We aren't just talking about financial restitution, but safeguards to ensure corporations cannot continue to injure future generations," Cuyahoga Falls mayor Don Walters said in a statement.
Cuyahoga County filed a similar suit in October against seven companies it thinks were instrumental in promoting opioids in that county.

Return to headline | Return to top
Summit County, multiple entities sue opioid makers, distributors

Dec 21, 2017 | Record-Courier (OH)

By Phil Keren

Led by Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro, nearly two dozen cities, villages and townships are joining forces to take legal action against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
With local leaders standing behind her, Greta Johnson, assistant chief of staff with Shapiro’s office, on Thursday morning announced that the county, along with multiple other entities, filed a civil lawsuit on Wednesday in Summit Common Pleas Court against the manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain medications.
“When we all stand together, we are telling our constituents, ‘We hear you and we are working here together for you,’” said Shapiro, who in October declared a state of emergency in the county due to the opioid epidemic.
Shapiro was joined by many local mayors, police chiefs and law directors in County Council chambers Thursday for the official announcement of the lawsuit.
Jurisdictions that are participating as plaintiffs in the suit are: Akron, Barberton, Boston Heights, Boston Township, Clinton, Copley Township, Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Green, Lakemore, Mogadore, Munroe Falls, Norton, Peninsula, Richfield Village, Silver Lake, Stow, Springfield Township, Tallmadge, Summit County Public Health and Valley Fire District.
Eleven manufacturing defendants that are named in the suit are “accused of unfairly, deceptively and fraudulently marketing and promoting opioids,” according to information provided by the county.
Those defendants are: Purdue Pharma LP; Purdue Pharma Inc.; Purdue Frederick Company Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA; Cephalon Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutical Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and Insys Therapeutics Inc.
Additionally, three distributor defendants are named in the suit, and the civil case filed by the county alleges these companies “freely distributed opioids into Summit County,” according to the county. These defendants are: McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc.
“The lawsuit that was filed seeks to hold these defendants accountable for their role in creating the opiate crisis in Summit County,” said Johnson. “And to pursue remedies to stop harmful marketing tactics and destructive distribution methods.”
Shapiro said the county will spend a quarter of a billion dollars during a 10-year time frame dealing with drug addiction issues and the associated costs. Of that amount, she said more than $155 million is “directly attributable to the opioid crisis.” She said the county medical examiner has reported a 209 percent increase in the amount of overdose deaths during the past five years.
Shapiro noted people who have overdosed and those who are battling addiction in many cases started by taking prescription pain pills.
“Pain pills were unfairly and deceptively marketed,” said Shapiro. “Pain pills that were misrepresented as not leading to addictions and pain pills that have in fact caused so much pain.”
Attorneys with Motley Rice LLC, headquartered in South Carolina, and Akron law firm Brennan, Manna & Diamond are working on the case on a “contingent basis,” said Shapiro, who added that that meant taxpayer money is not being used for this fight.
David Ackerman, attorney with Motley Rice LLC, said the complaint documents contain “a lot of details about the harm to the county,” and he emphasized that both monetary and injunctive relief were being sought.
Though he did not specify how much money was being sought, Ackerman noted, “There are numbers in the complaint that detail how much the county has already spent [on the opioid epidemic].”
Explaining he did not share his legal strategy, Ackerman said, “Injunctive relief will be what we deem appropriate to address the harms to the county.”
Ackerman said his firm is representing five states — Alaska, Kentucky, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina — and several cities, including Chicago, in opioid lawsuits.
“While we can never put a dollar amount on the lives that we’ve lost, we must ask the courts to evaluate this crisis and impose restorative justice,” said Shapiro.
Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Walters emphasized that, in addition to financial restitution, the suit is also seeking to implement safeguards “to ensure corporations cannot continue to injure our future generations.”
“While we cannot restore the lives that we have already lost to opioids, we can do everything in our power to prevent the next victims,” said Walters. ”... This collaborative action is one more imperative measure that we have to take to further move the needle on addressing the opioid crisis, and we at the city of Cuyahoga Falls are fully committed to seeing this through. We have been to way too many funerals.”
Other officials on why they joined the suit
Tallmadge Mayor David Kline said his city is “not immune” from the crisis and noted he has attended three funerals in Tallmadge during the last two months for families who lost a loved one to the opioid epidemic.
“We’ve really got to make the pharmaceutical companies accountable ...” said Kline. “Just to get the word out and make them start advertising differently and do things differently. It’s so important.”
Silver Lake Police Chief John Conley said Shapiro is “attacking a problem on a new front.” He added that the village “has not gone unscathed” by the opioid epidemic.
“I think we can all appreciate the initiative that the county executive has taken here,” added Silver Lake Police Lt. Steve Justice.
Stow Law Director Amber Zibritosky noted, “the opiate epidemic has had a tremendous effect on our residents.”
Though the city has taken several steps to fight the problem, Zibritosky said, “We really need to join to stop the supply. The supply really starts with the prescription pills ... if we don’t attack that, then we’re not going to move our fight forward.”
“It is an unfair fight,” said Stow Mayor Sara Kline, who noted it was “outrageous” that pharmaceutical companies with large budgets “have been able to take advantage of cities like Stow and our residents and really dupe doctors and patients into believing these drugs are safe when they clearly are not. We have to marshal all our resources. It’s David vs. Goliath here ... we’re not going to be taken advantage of anymore.”
Munroe Falls City Councilman Jim Iona said while his municipality is “a small city,” it has “had issues with opioids, we’ve had deaths, it’s affecting us.”
“I’m happy that this lawsuit is going to happen and maybe this will lead to some relief of the epidemic,” said Iona.

Return to headline | Return to top
Summit County joins 21 local communities and health department to sue opioid manufacturers and distributors

Dec 21, 2017 | Cleveland.com (OH)

By Jennifer Conn

Summit County has joined with Summit County Public Health, the city of Akron and a number of other cities, towns and communities to sue 11 manufacturers and three distributors of prescription opioid products.
The lawsuit accuses drug makers and distributors of repeatedly lying to doctors and engaging in deceptive practices to sell more drugs.
Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro announced the lawsuit at a press conference on Thursday surrounded by representatives from the communities and the public health department,
Shapiro had declared a county state of emergency in October because of the opioid epidemic. She says that Summit County has spent nearly $66 million addressing drug opioid-related issues during the past five years. Shapiro said the county will divert $150 million from other programs over the next 10 years to keep up with the costs of the epidemic.
While no dollar figure is named in the suit, the plaintiffs seek restorative and injunctive relief to prevent the companies named in the suit from "continuing these dangerous and destructive practices."
"It is incumbent on us now to hold the 11 manufacturers and three distributors responsible for the role they played in causing such a loss of time, talent and treasure from Summit County," Shapiro said, referring to Summit County overdose deaths. "While we can never put a dollar amount on the lives we lost we must ask the court to evaluate this the crisis and impose restorative justice. "
The plaintiffs are working on the lawsuit with Brennan, Manna & Diamond LLC and Motley Rice LLC, which has represented other states and the city of Chicago in similar suits. The firms are working at no upfront cost to taxpayers, but would receive 25 percent of award from the lawsuit.
Among many assertions in the 140-page suit, the manufacturers are accused of telling a series of lies to physicians to change the way opioids are viewed to sell more drugs.
The suit asserts manufacturers told doctors that the highly addictive drugs are not addictive when used for short- or long-term pain control, and that people who seemed addicted were not, but just needed more drugs. The suit also says drug makers told doctors they could use "screening tools" to determine which patients were most likely to become addicted.
The suit accuses the following manufacturers of "unfairly, deceptively and fraudulently marketing and promoting opioids:"Purdue Pharma L.P.Purdue Pharma Inc.Purdue Frederick Company Inc.Teva Pharmaceuticals USACephalon Inc.Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Inc.Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.Endo Health Solutions Inc.Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.Insys Therapeutics Inc.
The suit accuses three distributors of providing the drugs in quantities that were far greater than a "legitimate market" and asserts they "ignored red flags of suspicious orders" to benefit financially. They also did not report suspicious buying patterns, which is their duty, the suit alleges. The distributors named in the suit are:McKesson CorporationAmerisourceBergen Drug CorporationCardinal Health Inc.
According to the complaint, through their actions, both distributor and manufacturers:Created a public nuisance;Violated the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices and Deceptive Trade Practices Acts;Acted in gross negligence;Violated the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act; andCreated injury through their actions.
According to the Summit County executive's office, more people died in Summit County from drug overdoses in 2015 and 2016 than in the entire decade of 2000 to 2009. Fatal heroin overdoses in Summit County have increased from in 153 in 2015 to 225 in 2016.
The Summit County Medical Examiner's office has seen a 209 percent increase in the number of overdose deaths. Earlier this year, a "mobile morgue unit" was used five times, which doubled the number of bodies that could be held.
You can read the complaint here.
In addition to Summit County, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are: Summit County Public Health, the City of Akron, the City of Barberton, the Village of Boston Heights, Boston Township, the Village of Clinton, Copley Township, Coventry Township, the City of Cuyahoga Falls, the City of Fairlawn, the City of Green, the Village of Lakemore, the Village of Mogadore, the City of Munroe Falls, the City of Norton, the Village of Peninsula, the Village of Richfield, the Village of Silver Lake, Springfield Township, the City of Stow, the City of Tallmadge and Valley Fire District.

Return to headline | Return to top
Summit County communities sue drug companies over opioid epidemic

Dec 21, 2017 | Fox 8 Cleveland (OH)

By Jen Steer

More than a dozen Summit County communities filed a civil lawsuit on Wednesday against 11 opioid manufacturers and three distributors.
The suit accuses the companies of unfair and deceptive marketing of opioids, leading to a public nuisance. Officials announced the suit during a news conference on Thursday.
Overdose is the leading cause of death in Ohio for people under the age of 55, Summit County officials said. Most of the overdose fatalities involve opioids.
The number of oxycodone, hydrocodone, heroin and fentanyl overdoses is so high that the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office requested a refrigerated trailer to use as a "mobile morgue." In October, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro declared a state of emergency because of the crisis.
"This holiday season, too many children are without their parents, too many mothers and fathers are without their sons and daughters and many, many others are desperately struggling to get their lives back on track. All of these heart-wrenching stories originate at the hands of opioid manufacturers and distributors," Shapiro said in a news release on Thursday.
Akron, Barberton, Boston Heights, Boston Township, Clinton, Copley Township, Coventry Township, Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Green, Lakemore, Mogadore, Munroe Falls, Norton, Peninsula, Richfield, Silver Lake, Springfield Township, Stow and Tallmadge are also involved in the lawsuit.
"This suit is about accountability. Those who we alleged are responsible for creating this crisis must be held responsible for, and help shoulder the costs of the enormous harm they have created," Barberton Mayor Bill Judge said.
Named in the suit are Purdue Pharma, L.P.; Purdue Pharma, Inc.; Purdue Frederick Company Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA; Cephalon, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.; Endo Health Solutions Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; and Insys Therapeutics, Inc., as well as McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, and Cardinal Health, Inc.
In May, Ohio became the second state to file suit against drug companies for downplaying the risks of Oxycontin and Percocet. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said that lead to people seeking cheaper and more accessible ways of dealing with chronic pain and addiction, like heroin.

Return to headline | Return to top

Southeast (FL, GA)

Delray Beach files federal lawsuit against opioid drugmakers

Dec 21, 2017 | Sun Sentinel (FL)

By Aric Chokey

Delray Beach is suing 12 major drug companies, joining nearly 200 other governments in a nationwide legal battle against the opioid industry.
The city filed the federal lawsuit Thursday, naming drugmakers, distributors and wholesalers. The city is seeking damages for the opioid epidemic and an end to what city officials say are deceptive marketing tactics.
“It’s going to be a battle,” Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein said. “But we need to do what we can on the front-end to prevent the next generation of addicts.”
The city alleges the companies violated federal law by engaging in deceptive marketing, committing negligence, and violating racketeering and corruption laws for operating an “opioid fraud enterprise.”
“Drug manufacturers’ deceptive marketing and sale of opioids to treat chronic pain is one of the main drivers of this catastrophic epidemic,” the lawsuit reads.
The case was sent to a judge in Ohio, who the New York Times reported is overseeing at least 189 similar federal suits from local, county and state governments.
Palm Beach and Broward counties also have decided to pursue lawsuits, but have not yet filed.
In response to similar lawsuits, some pharmaceutical companies have acknowledged there is an opioid addiction problem, but deny wrongdoing on their part.
The companies say they’ve taken steps to prevent the diversion of pain medicine and that combating the epidemic is a collaborative effort of the industry with doctors and legislators.
Overdoses in Delray Beach swelled more than 250 percent from 2015 to 2016, jumping from 195 to 690. Glickstein estimated a price tag between $2,000 and $2,500 for each emergency call per overdose, a cost that falls on the city’s taxpayers.
Delray Beach previously sought help from San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in August to investigate potential claims the city could make. The firm is covering the costs of the lawsuit in exchange for 23 percent of any award from a judgment, plus expenses.
Outside of Florida, other communities have had success with similar lawsuits, winning settlements after targeting the drug industry’s marketing tactics.
Delray and other cities with pending suits have likened their complaints to those against Big Tobacco in the 1990s — a federal judge ruled that the tobacco companies had mislead the public about the dangers of cigarettes.
Glickstein said the city is seeking damages for the expenses that overdoses have cost the city, but that the overall goal is to halt the opioid industry’s marketing practices.
“If we didn’t win a nickel but the manufacturers are forced to stop the false marketing, then this would be a success,” he said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Delray Beach officially takes big pharma to court over opioid epidemic

Dec 21, 2017 | WPBF (FL)

By Jimmie Johnson

The city of Delray Beach announced it is the first Florida municipality to file a federal lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry Thursday.
City leaders said big pharma shoulders much of the blame for the deadly opioid crisis.
"The human toll of this is something you can’t calculate, but the financial side of this is something that is calculable," said Mayor Cary Glickstein in July, when city commissioners unanimously voted to take on the drug industry.
The lawsuit filed by Robbins, Geller, Rudman & Dowd LLP, targets nine pharmaceutical companies they said, “used big tobacco-style marketing of prescription drugs to increase sales, leading to otherwise avoidable deaths.”
In 2016, the city said emergency responders were called out to nearly 700 overdoses, and four hundred more in the first half of 2017.
The city realizes it is going to be a tough fight to end this epidemic and beat out the pharmaceutical industry in
court.
A fight the mayor once said he does not think they will be doing alone.
"It’s going to be a fight. I fully expect a lot of other cities, counties, attorney generals in other states are going to get on board,” said Glickstein.
Representatives of pharmaceutical companies sued in similar lawsuits have said they recognize the critical public health issues posed by opioid abuse, but are working to help.
Others have called similar lawsuits unfounded.

Return to headline | Return to top
DeKalb County sues opioid makers over costs of addiction, deaths

Dec 21, 2017 | Atlanta Journal Constitution (GA)

By Joshua Sharpe

DeKalb County on Wednesday filed suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors and others who allegedly helped mislead the public about the dangers of the drugs.
Deaths from opioids have skyrocketed in the county, as they have across Georgia. From 1999 to 2013, deaths in the state tripled.
“This case is about one thing: corporate greed,” the suit begins. “Defendants put their desire for profits above the health and well-being of DeKalb County consumers at the cost of plaintiff.”
DeKalb officials, like peers in other counties, are suing to get the defendants to reimburse public funds that have been used to fight addiction. The county has seen increased need for law enforcement, emergency care, treatment and more.DeKalb County sues opioid makers over costs of addiction, deathsJoshua Sharpe The Atlanta Journal-Constitution11:26 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 DeKalb County Share12DEKALB CO.
DeKalb County on Wednesday filed suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors and others who allegedly helped mislead the public about the dangers of the drugs.
Deaths from opioids have skyrocketed in the county, as they have across Georgia. From 1999 to 2013, deaths in the state tripled.
“This case is about one thing: corporate greed,” the suit begins. “Defendants put their desire for profits above the health and well-being of DeKalb County consumers at the cost of plaintiff.”
DeKalb officials, like peers in other counties, are suing to get the defendants to reimburse public funds that have been used to fight addiction. The county has seen increased need for law enforcement, emergency care, treatment and more.
READ: Doctors and the opioid crisis: An AJC National Investigation
READ: DeKalb police shot 25 times more black people than whites
READ: In Fulton and DeKalb, dozens of murder suspects out on bond
Those costs can be traced back to campaigns to mislead doctors and consumers about the addictive nature of drugs, such as OxyContin, Fentanyl and Percocet, and push higher doses, the suit said.
The first defendant listed, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, agreed in 2007 to pay $600 million in fines and payments to resolve federal charges of “misbranding” the drug. Three former executives of the company pleaded guilty and were ordered to pay more than $34 million in fines.
In the years that followed, opioids have continued a fatal tear across the country.
"The pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and distributors cannot continue to mislead the public," Shayna E. Sacks, a partner at the firm representing DeKalb, Napoli Shkolnik, said in a news release. "This suit will hold big pharma accountable for the damage they have caused this community."
The complaint, which the release said isn’t costing taxpayers, is against close to 30 defendants who were involved in misleading the public.
The county follows Fulton County, which is also suing some 30 defendants over the issue using the same law firm.
The defendants are:
Purdue Pharma
The Purdue Frederick Company
Teva Pharmaceuticals
Cephalon
Johnson & Johnson
Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Endo Pharmaceuticals
Allergan
Actavis
Endo Health Solutions
Watson Laboratories
Insys Therapeutics
McKesson Corporation
Cardinal Health
AmerisourceBergen Corporation
Russell Portenoy
Perry Fine
Scott Fishman
Lynn Webster
Medicine Center Pharmacy
Amrac Medical Clinic
J.M. Smith Corporation
Vaxserve
PSS World Medical
Attain Med
Bloodworth Wholesale Drugs

Return to headline | Return to top

Southwest/West (NM, UT)

New Mexico adds 3 to suit against opioid makers, wholesalers

Dec 21, 2017 | Associated Press

By Staff

The New Mexico attorney general’s office added on Wednesday three new pharmaceutical companies to a lawsuit accusing opioid manufacturers and distributors of exacerbating the state’s drug addiction crisis.
Attorney General Hector Balderas announced that Mallinckrodt, Insys, and Noramco were added to a lawsuit in state district court against five of the nation’s largest opioid manufacturers and three major wholesale distributors.
The suit accuses opioid manufacturers of aggressively pushing highly addictive and dangerous drugs and falsely representing to doctors that patients would rarely succumb to addiction. It accuses distributors of failing to monitor, investigate and report suspicious orders of prescription opiates.
“The entire pharmaceutical opioid industry, including both manufacturers and distributors together, has been in on the scheme to illegally market and sell opioids to New Mexicans, and we’ve modified our complaint to show that,” Balderas said.
Balderas said the lawsuit is modeled after past litigation against tobacco companies to funnel private profits toward drug treatment and law enforcement.
The addition comes just as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that last year’s age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths nationwide was more than three times the rate in 1999.
New Mexico’s drug overdose death rate is far above the national average of 19.8 per 100,000 residents. The state’s rate is 25.2 per 100,000 residents.

Return to headline | Return to top
Following Salt Lake County’s lead, five more Utah counties plan suits against opioid makers

Dec 21, 2017 | The Salt Lake Tribune (UT)

By Jennifer Dobner

Just about a month ago, Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes made a pitch to county governments struggling to deal with the havoc wreaked by opioid addiction statewide: Why not sue the $11 billion pharmaceutical industry that brought the problem to Utah’s door?
Little did the Draper Republican know how quickly county governments would get on board.
At least five counties — Cache, Davis, Utah, Washington and Weber — have so far passed, or are considering, resolutions to take legal action against Big Pharma, said Lincoln Shurtz, director of external relations for the Utah Association of Counties (UAC).
The wave followed a Nov. 14 announcement that Salt Lake County planned to sue. A few days later, Hughes took his message to elected officials at the annual UAC meeting in St. George.
“Everyone recognizes this is an issue that has affected their communities,” said Shurtz. “So there was an immediate response to go out and pass resolutions.”
Hughes is more than pleased by the response and hopes other will follow suit.
“If we have 29 counties say we’re ready to do something about this, that would be very good news,” the speaker said. “And it would be a very powerful statement.”
More than 100 cities, counties and states across the nation have already done what Utah communities now intend to do: file lawsuits they hope will allow them to recoup their costs for increased law enforcement, criminal justice, drug treatment and other social services.
In many cases, the lawsuits allege drug companies used deceptive marketing and lied to medical practitioners and consumers about the likelihood of addiction associated with opioid use.

Return to headline | Return to top
Sedgwick County commissioners sue opioid distributors and manufacturers

Dec 21, 2017 | KWCH (KS)

By Staff

The Sedgwick County board of commissioners is suing more than 20 opioid distributors and manufacturers including McKesson Corporation.
The Wichita law firm Prochaska, Howell & Prochaska LLC filed the complaint in federal court on Thursday.
The law firm will represent the county. This is the first county in Kansas to file a lawsuit about the epidemic.
The complaint outlines the lawsuit is to eliminate the hazard to public health and safety caused by the opioid epidemic, to abate the nuisance caused by it and get money that has been spent because of the deceptive and unfair marketing or unlawful prescriptions.
The lawsuit will not cost the county or taxpayers anything. The lawyers involved will not be paid unless the county receives money from the lawsuit.
Prochaska, Howell & Prochaska LLC says Kansas ranks as the 16th worse state in the opioid epidemic and according to the complaint, deaths in Sedgwick Count due to opioids have been on the rise.
The goal of the lawsuit, the law firm says, is to let people know the problem impacts everyone.
"We want to educate people that it can happen to good families and all types of families," Attorney Brad Prochaska says.
The lawsuit pits Sedgwick County against some of the biggest companies in the U.S.
"It's telling that there's an enormous amount of money these companies are making, which is the motivation to allow the crisis to grow and continue and we have to step up and stop it," Prochaska says.
Prochaska, Howell & Prochaska LLC has a team of 28 people working on the case, which it expects to take several years.
"The problem is getting worse, not better," Prochaska says. "(It has been) getting worse for a decade and someone needs to step up to the plate."

Return to headline | Return to top

Northeast

City of Ithaca looking to possibly sue opioid manufacturers for cost of opioid epidemic in community

Dec 21, 2017 | Ithaca Voice (NY)

By Jolene Almendarez

The city of Ithaca took a step Wednesday night toward possibly suing pharmaceutical companies for misleading the public about the addictive qualities of prescription opioids, a major contributing factor in the national opioid epidemic.
During a City Administration meeting, Mayor Svante Myrick said, "What's become very clear is that these pharmaceutical companies, the companies that manufacture opiates, knew pretty early on these were highly addictive and pretended that they weren't — not just pretended that they weren't — but marketed them as if they were a consequence-free alternative to managing your pain. That was also grossly irresponsible."
He said that in 2016, the number of people who have died from opioid-related deaths amounted to more people than were killed by gun violence or car crashes annually.
The lawsuit would sue opioid manufacturers for the monetary strain the opioid epidemic has put on communities for services such as additional training for first responders, the cost of the opioid overdose-reversing drug Narcan, and the increased demand from firefighters, ambulances and police officers for opioid-related calls.
"This will look and feel a lot like a class action but its technically not a class action," Ithaca City Attorney Ari Lavine said. "They (attorneys) could represent us individually, but they also represent, individually, lots of municipalities who have lined up for the exact same claim."
The resolution states, "That the City Attorney is hereby authorized to commence civil litigation against opioid manufacturers and others who have harmed the City by promoting the abuse of opioids and to retain counsel—at no out-of-pocket cost to the City—to represent the City in such litigation."
It unanimously passed through the committee and is going forward to Common Council for a vote.Related: With Overdoses on Rise, Cities and Counties Look for Someone to Blame
If approved, the city would join many municipalities in New York and across the country, including Tompkins County, that have banded together to sue opioid companies for their role in the drug epidemic.
"I would just add that this is part of our all-of-the-above strategy to combat the large drug problem of opiate abuse particularly," Myrick said, a kind of "truth and reconciliation process that we have to go through as a community."

Return to headline | Return to top

Commentary and FYIs

56 miles from temptation

Dec 21, 2017 | The Washington Post

By Terrence McCoy

The trailer had looked like a good place to disappear, and so they had come, spending every dollar of his disability check on the move, and then some, pawning her wedding ring, and his guns, believing it wasn’t too late to begin a new life if only they could get away from the old. Now it was 28 days into this new life, and where were they?
Roger Ray, 48, was clean — sober for the longest stretch of time since the accident more than a decade ago. He was alone, his wife, Melinda, lying down in the bedroom, which was pretty much all she had done since her overdose just days before the move. He was in pain, in his lower back, in his right knee, feeling it with a clarity that only sobriety could bring.He was drinking coffee, thinking.
It would be so easy to sneak back to Salyersville to meet a drug contact. So easy to deaden what he felt with whatever he could get, opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine. Fifty-six miles and five turns was all that separated him from his old life there. He could do it in less than two hours — drive, turn, acquire, use. He had promised Melinda that he wouldn’t, that she could trust him now. But every day he seemed to hurt more, and function less, and what was he going to do about that? How was he supposed to stop using drugs if drugs were the only thing that he knew of that would erase his pain?
He felt trapped, one more person caught in an ever-widening net of pain and addiction in a country where the geography of disability is increasingly overlapping with the geography of opioid use.
Over the past generation, disability in America changed. As the number of people receiving federal disability benefits surged, before tapering off in 2015, the share with circulatory disorders such as heart disease, once the plurality, shrank significantly amid medical advances. Meanwhile, the percentage of workers awarded Social Security Disability Insurance for musculoskeletal disorders — disabilities frequently treated with opioids — began to rise sharply. By 2012, nearly half of the beneficiaries were using opioids, and more than one-fifth chronically, according to a paper published last year by researchers at Dartmouth College and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Perhaps nowhere else do disability and opioid use more closely intersect than in Kentucky. It’s here where the counties with the highest rates of opioid use are also the counties with the highest participation rates in federal disability programs, clustered in the hills and hallows of Appalachia. Between 2000 and 2015, annual opioid use among adult recipients of Supplemental Security Income, for the disabled poor, more than tripled in Kentucky, according to an October report by the state Department for Income Support, from 48 pills per capita to 147. Among Kentucky’s general population, over approximately the same period, it rose from 30 pills to 72.
“The system produces the outcome,” said W. Bryan Hubbard, acting commissioner of the department. Disability applicants often need to substantiate claims of pain with prescriptions to get benefits, and “once you get the benefit . . . what else is there to do outside of exist and numb yourself? And the opioid pills, it’s exactly what they do. It deadens the person. It deadens their mind. It anesthetizes them to life.”
Roger, only beginning to understand life without anesthetic, stood, grunted in pain and went outside to his faded Ford Five Hundred with a missing bumper. “God, I would love to have a pain pill right now,” he said, starting the car, realizing that as badly as he wanted one now, he’d want one even more in four days. That was when his next disability check would come in, and he’d finally have the money either to act on temptation, or take it away altogether with suboxone, a medication that treats withdrawal symptoms.
Not knowing where else to go, not knowing what else to do, he drove to the only grocery store in miles. He pulled up, killed the engine, got out, picked up another tin of chewing tobacco, and then sat for a long moment, looking at the dashboard.
Fifty-seven miles of gas left, it said.
Fifty-six miles to his old house. Fifty-six miles to his old life.
It would be so easy.
He shook his head, took out a big pinch of chewing tobacco, and, turning right instead of left out of the parking lot, drove the three miles home.
Everything about the trailer he went back to had the paranoid feeling of a hideout, from the phone that wasn’t plugged in, to the blinds that were always drawn, to his hesitancy about divulging the address to anyone. He knew Melinda was trying to make it livable. She cleaned whenever she wasn’t lying down. She had hung inspirational quotes — “If life gets too hard to stand, kneel” — put out air fresheners and even placed several photo albums on the coffee table, filled with moments so distant that it seemed to Roger as though someone else had lived them.
There was Roger with the pit bull he used to take to dog shows around the country. There was Roger just off a shift at the coal mine, where he had operated a bulldozer and made $4,000 per month. This one had Roger with his shirt off, muscles upon muscles, capable of benching 365 pounds — “indestructible” was how he described feeling then, right up until the day it happened, on Nov. 20, 2005.
It was a Sunday. He was miles off the nearest road hunting deer, on his ATV, when he flipped. As the vehicle tumbled, his boot caught its bottom, ripping open his right knee, twisting his lower back out of alignment. Then came his hunting partner, who was saying, “Roger, that’s a lot of blood,” and the parade of doctors who were writing prescriptions, and his eventual return home, knee dislocated, so frail and depressed and incapable that Melinda decided to hide his Thompson .45 just in case.
Twelve years later, what he had left was this: a monthly check for $1,240, a hollowed face frozen in a grimace, two dogs he took out every hour, less for their reprieve than for his, and Melinda, always Melinda, who was coming out of the bedroom for the first time the next day, at 4 p.m.
“My head’s killing me,” she said. “It hurt all night.” Neither had slept much since they’d quit drugs and moved here — Roger because of pain and withdrawals; Melinda because of anxiety and withdrawals — and so had gone another night, a night when some of their old acquaintances had gotten their disability checks and sent Facebook messages asking whether Roger or Melinda knew where they could get some pills. “It ain’t funny for me, you know?” Melinda said. “You know, I moved away so people wouldn’t know where I was at.”
She sat on a recliner with tape covering its tears, cross-legged, ankle jiggling.
“And Linda and James have been trying to talk to you all day,” she said of two more people in search of drugs.
“What’d you say?” Roger asked, eyes on the television.
“Well, I told them no,” she said, sighing. “It must be nice being able to waste that much money.”
They had spent so many years talking about pills that it sometimes seemed as though they discussed little else. In the months after the accident, the conversations had been reminders to take his OxyContin. Then they turned to his mounting tolerance and how difficult it was to get enough, as state authorities began targeting opioid abuse, and his daily prescription dropped from eight pills to four, to three, to two. All over eastern Kentucky, pain-management clinics were closing. Doctors were getting in trouble. Others were moving away, or writing prescriptions for far fewer pills than before, and soon Roger was looking beyond the clinics for what he wanted, not just for his pain, but because drugs and the people he met through them gave him something to do, which was how it went the night Melinda overdosed.
For weeks, he had been saying he was ready to quit, ready like Melinda, who, swearing she was done, had started taking suboxone. His last pain doctor had just moved, cutting him off, and he believed he just needed to get away from everyone in Salyersville, so they found a trailer 56 miles away. But then the end of the month arrived, and they were out of money, and there had been nothing to do for days on end. The night of Sept. 28, he put his hands on his knees and, feeling out of options, said, “I can get some on credit,” and then he did, much more than Melinda thought he would. They stayed up all night, high. At daybreak, she gave him a strange look. She said she loved him. She went into the bathroom and locked the door. He started pounding on it when she didn’t come out, worried that her disappointment in herself, and in him, might have finally become too much.
“What’s your emergency?” the 911 dispatcher asked after he’d broken in and saw what had happened.
“My wife swallowed too many pills,” he said flatly, according to an audio recording.
“Do you know how many she took?”
“I have no idea.”
“Is she responsive?”
“Not much,” he said, his voice giving way to a sob.
“Is she breathing?”
And now it was four weeks later, and they were in the trailer he had promised, on a street where they knew nobody, when he looked over at her. She was breathing. She was taking a drink from a cup with the name of the hospital where the ambulance had taken her. It was again the end of the month. There again was nothing to do. He again felt out of options. This time, he kept his temptations to himself as night came, and the lights stayed off, and the living room filled with the blue glow of the television.
The following day, Melinda was sweeping in the kitchen, agitated, fatigued. Roger, thrashing in pain, had kept her up all night again, and hours later, so many other things were going wrong. The refrigerator was empty. They hadn’t eaten anything besides potatoes for days, and she felt terrible for it. It had been her ultimatum — either he’d quit, or she’d leave him — that had brought them here, where they were always irritable, going through the worst of their withdrawals.
“My hair’s burning me up,” she said, lifting her dark curls off her neck.
“Yeah, it’s starting to get warm in here,” Roger said, also sweating.
She looked at the floor, annoyed that Roger had brought in dirt after he had taken the dogs out.
“I just swept twice yesterday,” she said. “Probably more than twice.”
“Honey,” he began. “I don’t know.”
She tried not to get angry. That wouldn’t put food in the fridge. Or make the floor clean. But she sometimes found it difficult not to be angry. Nothing in her life was how she wanted it to be, and some days she felt ready to explode with resentment that had compounded since they met in 2001, when she was still the talkative bartender, and he was still the confident miner who came by her bar after work. After the accident, she did everything she could to care for him. She went part time at work, then quit. She helped him in the bathroom. She drove him to appointments. She did all the shopping because he felt humiliated riding Walmart’s complimentary scooters. But ultimately it wasn’t all the things they lost — his mining salary, the blowout Christmases, the big summer parties — that bothered her as much as the habits they gained.
She had never thought of herself as someone who does drugs, not then, and not now. But she hadn’t wanted Roger to be alone, so she started using with him. She also had her own pain from three car wrecks, which led to a federal disability claim that’s pending on appeal. Then there was her childhood, which had included a dead mother, an incarcerated father, foster homes and sexual abuse. But were those merely excuses? Or was the real problem her? She was the one, after all, who had gone along with everything, even after pills came to dominate their universe, and Roger started smoking meth when he couldn’t get more, and violence seeped into their marriage, and he broke promise after promise that he would quit, including the night she overdosed.
She sighed loudly and put away the broom. “I can only clean so much, and then there’s nothing else to do.” She sat down, stood up, sat down again. “I’m about to turn the air on,” she said, reaching for an air-conditioner they tried not to run to save money, then went back to her chair and her thoughts.
Even now, she still didn’t fully trust him. She suspected that he used while she had last been in the hospital, and although she was pretty sure he wasn’t using now, she still snapped at him that morning.
“There’s your excuse to go get high if you want to,” she had yelled at him, after an argument over nothing.
“I don’t need an excuse,” he had said, going outside for what seemed like a long time, bringing in the dirt that she then had started to sweep up.
She now regretted having said that, not only because she still loved him, and didn’t want to hurt him, but because any additional stress made it more difficult for them to quit. That was particularly true at this time of the month, so close to his next disability check, when they’d finally be able to afford a suboxone appointment but were nonetheless thinking about what else that money could buy.
“Used to be back in the day, we’d be adding up the bills and we would have went and got a 30 [milligram painkiller] or two tonight,” she told Roger a little later, hours before the check was to arrive. “We’d go to the bank to get money, and the 30 dealers would be standing there, selling them. I mean, they jumped in our car before, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” Roger said. “Or they’d call us while we were at the ATM.”
“ ‘Want to stop by? We’ll meet you,’ ” she said, mimicking the dealers, beginning to laugh, until she saw that Roger wasn’t smiling but silently staring ahead.
“Used to be we were driven back then,” she continued quickly, but he didn’t say anything to that, either.
There was a silence.
“I’m so wore out,” she finally said, wanting their arguments to be over. “I just get so frustrated. Usually when you’re hateful, I let you have the last word, but today, I didn’t.”
“Nope,” he said, but this time, he did look over at her, and his eyes were tender, and he gave her a small smile, and, together, they waited for one hour to pass to the next.
Then it was time to go.
The check had been deposited into Roger’s bank account the night before, after midnight, and the only thing left to do was spend it. They had to pay rent, electricity, water, Internet, insurance, make the car payment, and get enough food to last until the food stamps arrived in two weeks. There was also the suboxone. Melinda’s daughter from her first marriage had found a treatment clinic nearby whose counselors didn’t accept Medicaid, which Melinda had, or Medicare, which Roger had through his disability, but could get Melinda in for an appointment that day for $200, the idea of which terrified her. She had left the house only once since they’d moved here, and that had been to the dollar store, not a doctor’s office. She put on a jingly metallic bracelet and her favorite boots and did her makeup.
“You look pretty,” Roger said.
“Too old for a pony tail,” she said, letting her hair down. “I’m knocking on 50.”
“You ready?” Roger asked.
“Not really. I’m about to throw up.”
She knew she had to be the one to get the suboxone, which effectively blocks many patients from getting future prescription painkillers, a risk Roger didn’t want to assume, considering his pain. He could handle it today, but what about next week, and next year, especially living in a place like the one they were looking at through the car’s windows?
“This makes me so depressed,” Melinda said, as the road curled along a river, going through mountains and past junk cars, unkempt trailers, the mine where Roger used to work, and a pain-management clinic where Melinda’s prescriptions were once filled. “The houses. The roads. . . . People out there on their porches all day, doing nothing. They don’t have nothing to do.”
Some days, they wondered whether they’d unwittingly fled one community overtaken by disability and drugs for one even more so. When Melinda first arrived in Floyd County, which has one of the nation’s highest opioid prescription rates, and where more than 1 in 4 working-age adults receive federal disability benefits, a man had approached her at a gas station and asked if she wanted something, and even though she declined, it had worried her. They couldn’t hide in their trailer forever. They had to leave at some point and meet people, and what would happen when they did? Would they just get sucked back in?
Their car struggled out of the mountains, eventually heading into Betsy Layne, population 688, where Roger got cellphone service for the first time in weeks. As he pulled up to a bank, his phone started vibrating with messages.
“Hah!” Melinda exclaimed, reaching for it, looking to see who had called to check in on them.
There were five voicemails.
“Ow!” Roger yelled, getting out of the car and limping to the ATM.
Each was from a different dealer.
“Every day,” Melinda said, shaking her head. She put the phone away and looked out the window. She didn’t bother listening to the messages. “Every day.”
“Got it all,” Roger said, slowly lowering himself back into the car, letting out another loud grunt.
He stared down at the money in his hands. There was $900. He slowly counted out the $200 for the suboxone appointment and handed it to Melinda.
Now she was looking at money in her hands, unsure.
“What if I spend that, and we need it for food?” she asked. “Or we need it for — ”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
She told him about the voicemails. And the drugs people had wanted to sell them.
“Same thing as always,” she said.
“Don’t have the sense God gave them,” he said.
“I can’t deal,” she said, leaning her head into one hand. “Five voicemails.”
He looked at the time. It was nearly 11 a.m. Melinda’s appointment was in half an hour. They had to make a decision.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked. “What do you want to do?”
The parking lot was nearly empty when they pulled up to the suboxone clinic, a single-story building hemmed in between an empty bowling alley and a mountain. There was only an unshaven man, crouched by its entrance, coaxing the final drags from a cigarette that looked to be all filter.
“Here we is,” Roger said. “Right on time.”
Melinda got out, knowing that Roger wouldn’t follow. He didn’t like treatment facilities. Or the counselors, their questions, along with the people who went to support groups. To him, addiction wasn’t a disease. It was a choice, and support groups were for people who wanted a lighter sentence from a judge, or to buy drugs from the dealers who sell at the meetings, so he stayed in the car, watching Melinda disappear inside.
She paid the $200 and sat down with a pile of forms that asked so many questions she felt ashamed to answer. “Have you abused prescription drugs?” “Do you abuse more than one drug at a time?” “Can you get through the week without using drugs?” For that one, she initially circled “Yes,” but then, thinking better of it, circled “No.”
“They ask you a million and one questions, girl,” said a slight man in a baseball cap, Melo Fonseca, 48, who had been a United Parcel Service employee until a car wreck partly paralyzed him and he started receiving Social Security Disability Insurance.
“Sitting here makes me feel worse, talking to a counselor,” she said.
He leaned in, and she looked up from her forms.
“I’ve been here seven years, and this place saved me,” he said. “Saved my marriage.”
“That’s what I was telling Roger,” she said, nodding.
She also had been telling Roger about her frustrations. She had looked for other suboxone clinics near them — ones that would take Medicaid — but they couldn’t take any more patients. What was the point, she increasingly thought, of having insurance if it didn’t pay for the things she needed? If there were so many people waiting for help that they would always be choosing between getting suboxone and paying the bills?
“I just paid $200, and I got to pay another $100” to the clinic, she said. “And I’m dying about it. At the same time, I know I’d waste it on something else, you know. I’ve wasted $1,000 a day before, and if I could get it back . . .”
“I’d be a millionaire by now,” Fonseca said.
“I’d be able to drive any kind of new car I wanted,” added another patient, Christopher Irick, 49, a former maintenance man, now a disability beneficiary for multiple sclerosis.
“Before I came to West Virginia and Kentucky, I never heard of a pill,” Fonseca said. “And after I got in that car wreck, that changed everything.”
“That’s how everybody started out,” Melinda said, looking around, seeing how they were ending up: disabled, defined by pain, waiting hours for suboxone, which can cause dependency, trading one addiction for another.
Hours went by, cigarettes accumulated at the entrance, the waiting room filled with people, then emptied, then Melinda, one of the final patients to leave, came out to the car, carrying a prescription for 24 tablets of suboxone, and bad news.
“I got to go to Prater,” she said as they drove away. No pharmacy nearby could fill her prescription, she had been told inside, and she had to go to her former pharmacy. That was Prater Drugs. In Salyersville.
“What do you want to do?” Roger said, speeding up, passing one car, then another. “I need to know!”
“Roger!” she said, frustrated, too. “I don’t care!”
He sighed, and on they went, driving the 56 miles neither wanted to drive, going to the town where they knew they couldn’t trust themselves, making a trip that once seemed so easy but now seemed like the most difficult thing they could possibly do. They pulled up to Prater Drugs. Roger went inside. He got the prescription. When he was coming out with the pills, he saw a man he didn’t want to see. It was the short, gaunt neighbor from their old street, with whom they had used drugs often, and here he was, coming across the street to talk.
“I’ve got some good stuff, man,” he told Roger.
Roger looked at him. Then he looked at Melinda. She was staring back at him.
“No,” was all Roger said. “No thanks.”
He got into the car and, with the suboxone, they drove the 56 miles home, back to their new house, in this new life, where, for the first time in as long as they could remember, they had a good night’s sleep.

Return to headline | Return to top
Wonkblog: CDC releases grim new opioid overdose figures: ‘We’re talking about more than an exponential increase’

Dec 21, 2017 | The Washington Post

By Christopher Ingram

The national opioid epidemic escalated in 2016, driven by an unprecedented surge in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates, according to new data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2016, a 28 percent increase over 2015. The number of people fatally overdosing on fentanyl and other synthetic opiates more than doubled, from 9,580 in 2015 to 19,413 in 2016. Deaths due to heroin were up nearly 20 percent, and deaths from other opiate painkillers, such as hydrocodone and oxycodone, were up 14 percent.
Overdose deaths from all drugs, including non-opioids, stood at 63,600 last year, an increase of 21 percent over the 2015 number.
“It's even worse than it looks,” said Keith Humphreys, an addiction specialist at Stanford University. Given that research has shown that the official figures could be undercounting the true number of opioid deaths by 20 percent or more, “we could easily be at 50,000 opioid deaths last year,” Humphreys said. “This means that even if you ignored deaths from all other drugs, the opioid epidemic alone is deadlier than the AIDS epidemic at its peak.”
Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which compiled the mortality data, agrees. “We've gone well beyond [the AIDS epidemic] now,” he said. “It's hard to take in.”
On deaths from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, “we're talking about more than an exponential increase,” Anderson added. And while only limited provisional data is currently available for 2017, things don't look any better. “My guess is that when all of the data are in that the [2017] trend line will be at least as steep as for 2016, if not steeper,” Anderson said.
While drug mortality has been increasing among all age groups since 1999, it's currently highest among those age 25 to 54. Overdose rates for all drugs were roughly 35 cases per 100,000 individuals among all three groups in 2016, compared to 12 deaths per 100,000 for those under 24 and 6 deaths per 100,000 among seniors age 65 and up.
Men (26 deaths per 100,000) are about twice as likely to die of a drug overdose as women (13 per 100,000). At the state level, West Virginia stands alone as the epicenter of overdose mortality in the U.S., with 52 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016. The two next-highest states, New Hampshire and Ohio, saw 39 deaths per 100,000.
“This is no longer an opioid crisis,” said Patrick Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman who was a member of President Trump's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “This is a moral crisis . . . we know how to answer this problem, but we can't get around our own prejudices.”
Kennedy says medication-assisted therapies, including new injectable drugs that block opioid cravings, are the key to curbing the crisis. But there's “a bias in recovery circles” against treatments like these, he says. He paraphrases it as: " 'You're not supposed to take medications — that's not called sobriety.' "
Beyond that, many experts say, political leaders still aren't taking the problem seriously, and in many instances are taking steps that will make it worse. “The Trump administration's latest proposed budget cuts the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration by $400 million,” said Stanford's Humphreys, “and the tax bill is projected to lead 13 million people to lose health insurance and any coverage for addiction treatment along with it.”
“The Trump administration has failed the country completely in its response to the opioid epidemic,” Humphreys added.
Earlier this year, President Trump's opioid commission recommended that the crisis be declared a national emergency, a designation that could have made emergency funding available. But in October, the president instead declared a public health emergency around the crisis, an announcement that carried no promise of additional funding.
Kennedy, who served on the commission, is critical of White House efforts so far. “He gave a fantastic speech,” Kennedy said. “But so far he's all talk and no follow-through.”
The political dithering is costing American lives, Kennedy said — 174 deaths from drug overdoses every day in 2016, one every 8½ minutes.
“Right now everybody says it's happening to somebody else's family,” Kennedy said. But if the current trends continue, “soon it will be happening to everybody's family.”

Return to headline | Return to top
Opioids now kill more people than breast cancer

Dec 21, 2017 | CNN

By Nadia Kounang

More than 63,600 lives were lost to drug overdose in 2016, the most lethal year yet of the drug overdose epidemic, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of those deaths involved opioids, a family of painkillers including illicit heroin and fentanyl as well as legally prescribed medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. In 2016 alone, 42,249 US drug fatalities -- 66% of the total -- involved opioids, the report says. That's over a thousand more than the 41,070 Americans who die from breast cancer every year.Much of the increase was driven by the rise in illicit synthetic opioids like fentanyl and tramadol.
The rate of deadly overdoses from synthetic opioids other than methadone has skyrocketed an average of 88% each year since 2013; it more than doubled in 2016 to 19,413, from 9,580 in 2015.Heroin also continues to be a problem, the report says.
Since 2014, the rate of heroin overdose deaths has jumped an average of 19% each year.The opioid crisis has raised significant awareness of prescription painkillers. Between 1999 and 2009, the rate of overdoses from such drugs rose 13% annually, but the increase has since slowed to 3% per year.In 2009, prescription narcotics were involved in 26% of all fatal drug overdoses, while heroin was involved in 9% and synthetics were involved in just 8%.
By comparison, in 2016, prescription drugs were involved in 23% of all deadly overdoses. But heroin is now implicated in about a quarter of all drug fatalities, and synthetic opioids play a role in nearly a third.These increases have contributed to a shortening of the US life expectancy for a second year in a row.
A state-by-state look
The states with the highest rates of overdose in 2016 were West Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire, the report said. The rate of overdose in West Virginia was over 2.5 times the national average of 19.8 overdose deaths for every 100,000 people.While the outlook nationwide is fairly bleak, it's particularly bad in some states.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia had overdose rates significantly higher than the national average.While overdose rates increased in all age groups, rises were most significant in those between the ages of 25 and 54.Provisional data for 2017 from the CDC show no signs of the epidemic abating, with an estimate of more than 66,000 overdose deaths for the year.
"Based on what we're seeing, it doesn't look like it's getting any better," said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics.He said the data for this year were still incomplete because of the time it takes to conduct death and toxicology investigations. However, Anderson says, the 2017 estimates are alarming.
"The fact that the data is incomplete and they represent an increase is concerning," he said.But addiction specialist Dr. Andrew Kolodny said that despite the devastating overdose numbers, there appeared to be some indicators of good news.
"Even though deaths are going up among people who are addicted heroin users, who use black-market opioids ... it's possible that we are preventing less people from becoming addicted through better prescribing," said Kolodny, executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.Studies have shown that while rates of opioid prescribing remain high in the US, they have decreased from a peak of 81 prescriptions for every 100 people in 2010 to about 70 per 100. Kolodny also pointed to recent surveys indicating that opioids were being less-frequently abused byteens.
A public health emergency
In October, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. "As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue. It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction," he said. "We can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.
"The week following, the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction issued its final report with more than 50 recommendations to help solve the opioid crisis, including expanding medicated assisted treatment, increasing the number of drug courts, coordinating electronic health records and increasing prescriber education.
However, Kolodny and other public health experts were disappointed that the actions by the president and the commission were not accompanied by funds."You don't call it an emergency and sit around do nothing about it -- and that's where we are," Kolodny said.
"The doing something should be a plan from the agencies ... and it should be seeking money from Congress."Commission member and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy agreed. "It means nothing if it has no funding to push it forward. You can't just have a speech like the President gave."
But fellow commission member Bertha Madras said that funding requests can't be immediately answered and pointed out that the White House is working with agencies now to determine costs and processes to implement the group's recommendations. "The commitment has to be accompanied by wise decisions and wise planning and a very judicious use of funding," she said.
The White House's Council of Economic Advisers recently estimated that the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 alone was $504 billion, nearly 3% of gross domestic product.
Kennedy worries that the tax bill passed this week will only worsen the crisis. "It's going to be the vote that sets this country back further than anything else in our ability to tackle this crisis. Period. There's going to be no more significant vote on opioids."
he bill, which is now headed to the President's desk to be signed into law, eliminates provisions of the individual mandate or penalties for being uninsured that were required under Obamacare. Once it is enacted, the nonpartisan Congressional Budge Office estimates, 13 million individuals will be uninsured by 2027, and health insurance premiums will go up. According to the 2016 Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health, 30% of Americans do not seek any sort of addiction treatment because they do not have insurance and cannot afford treatment.
"We've got a human addiction tsunami. We need all hands on deck," Kennedy said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Purdue, maker of OxyContin, launches major ad campaign to counter critics

Dec 22, 2017 | STAT News

By Andrew Joseph

Facing a barrage of lawsuits for its alleged role in seeding the opioid crisis, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, is countering with a public outreach campaign meant to show it is doing its part to stem the epidemic.
The company last week launched an advertising campaign in national newspapers, Washington publications, and local papers in its home state of Connecticut. In a statement, Purdue said the ads were part of a broader “long-term initiative,” but declined to provide details about what else would be included beyond the advertisements.
“We manufacture prescription opioids,” reads one of the ads, a full-page spread in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “How could we not help fight the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis?”
The ad emphasizes that the company is a “research-driven, science-based” entity founded by a pair of doctors more than a century ago and dedicated to discovering safer new pain medications. It also mentions other efforts the company has backed, including distributing federal prescribing guidelines to clinicians and pharmacists and limits on opioid painkillers for first-time patients.
Purdue and the family behind the company, the Sacklers, have recently been the subject of investigative news stories looking at their alleged role in and profits from the opioid epidemic.
“Despite how our critics have portrayed us, for more than 15 years this company has a strong track record of addressing prescription drug abuse, which includes collaborating with law enforcement, funding state prescription drug monitoring programs and enhancing interoperability, and supporting drug take back programs,” Purdue spokesman Robert Josephson said in a statement. “We believe it is important to communicate our view on this critical public health challenge directly to the public.”
A growing number of cities, counties, and states have sued Purdue, alleging it misled the public about the risks of opioid painkillers. The suits also target other opioid makers, including Endo International, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Janssen, and in some cases, drug distributors. Purdue has denied the allegations in the lawsuits.
The company is also appealing a Kentucky judge’s ruling in a case brought by STAT that could lead to the unsealing of a trove of records about how the company marketed OxyContin.
Separately, McKesson, a large drug distributor that has been the subject of Washington Post and “60 Minutes” pieces about its alleged role in the opioid epidemic and that is being sued by some jurisdictions, also recently started what a company spokesperson called a “small, targeted advertising effort” highlighting the steps it is taking.
“We wanted viewers to have access to all the facts, as well an opportunity to learn more about how the pharmaceutical supply chain works, and to better understand our compliance programs and our proactive efforts to find solutions to this horrible epidemic,” the McKesson spokesperson said.

Return to headline | Return to top
'Pill Mill': Doctor Indicted For Distributing 2.7 Million Opioids, Causing Five Overdose Deaths

Dec 22, 2017 | Tech Times

By Athena Chan

A Pennsylvania doctor has been formally charged for operating a "pill mill" wherein he unlawfully distributed millions of opioids to his patients, causing five overdose deaths. He allegedly prescribed opioids without a medical purpose on multiple occasions.Pill Mill'
A doctor from Pennsylvania is facing a 19-count indictment for unlawful distribution of controlled substances, for having two drug-involved premises, and for causing the deaths of five patients because of said unlawful drug distribution. Dr. Raymond Kraynak was taken into custody by agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and made his initial appearance for United States Magistrate Judge Schwab.
Reports state that Dr. Kraynak allegedly maintained two facilities in Shamokin and Mt. Carmel in which he prescribed approximately 2.7 million units of the opioids oxycodone, oxycontin, hydrocodone, and fentanyl to over 2,800 patients in the period between January 2016 and July 2017. Further, Dr. Kraynak allegedly prescribed opioids to multiple patients on multiple occasions without any medical purpose, without proper medical examination, without proper assessment of the patient's complaints, and without assessing the patients' risk for abuse.
He is also being charged as a result of the opioid overdose deaths of five of his patients between the years of 2013 and 2015. As a result, the government is seeking the closure of his facilities, forfeiture of his medical license, and $500,000.Opioid Epidemic
The indictment against Dr. Kraynak is the latest case of medical practitioners being held accountable for the widespread opioid epidemic. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, there have been 120 opioid-related charges filed since the beginning of the year.
"This is the deadliest drug crisis in our history, and it's unconscionable that some doctors and medical professionals would violate their oaths to exploit it for cash," said Attorney General Sessions, also stating that the U.S. Department of Justice will remain relentless in fighting street dealers, medical practitioners, and even companies that have helped fuel the crisis.
Examples of these charges include cities and states suing pharmaceutical companies that allegedly contributed to the epidemic. For instance, Kentucky has taken legal action against Endo, and so has Montana against OxyContin manufacturer Purdue. The City of Newark has also taken legal action against multiple opioid manufacturers for false and deceptive advertising.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in 2015 alone, 12.5 million people misused prescription opioids, which resulted in 2 million people having opioid misuse disorder and 15,281 overdose deaths. What's more, in the same year, 828,000 people used heroin, with 135,000 of them using the drug for the first time.

Return to headline | Return to top
DeKalb County waiting to file lawsuit against opioid companies

Dec 21, 2017 | Daily Chronicle (IL)

By Christopher Heimerman

DeKalb County has opted not to join the five suburban counties that joined a nationwide trend to sue the biggest opioid pharmaceutical manufacturers in an attempt to recoup costs of battling an epidemic of addiction.
McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Will and Lake counties’ state’s attorney’s offices filed separate lawsuits Thursday against several pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Lake Bluff-based Abbott Labs, and three doctors.
Shaw Media photos DeKalb County States Attorney Rick Amato (shown) said whereas those counties are going after manufacturers, a forthcoming lawsuit to be filed in DeKalb County will go after distributors, as well.
“We didn’t want to rush and just jump in because they’re doing it. We weren’t in a position to just go along with the way they were going with it,” Amato said. “There’s a bigger breadth, if you go after both the manufacturers and the distributors. You can tie all the allegations in tighter.”
The lawsuit claims that the drug companies' deceptive marketing of pain pills has led to 2.1 million Americans having an opioid use disorder, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Amato expects DeKalb County's lawsuit will be filed about the time the county launches its drug turn-in program Hope, modeled after the Lee and Whiteside County program Safe Passage, through which drug users can turn themselves and their paraphernalia in, get treatment and not be charged.
Amato said he's leaning on county officials such as County Board Chairman Mark Pietrowski and Sheriff Roger Scott. Amato said that Scott, in particular, urged him to take his time to file a leakproof suit.
“His knowledge and his vision is very strong,” Amato said. “We will be doing it. We’re just making sure it’s right for us.”
The lawsuit specifically named Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Dr. Perry Fine, Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster.
“A lot of [people] end up becoming addicted because of a legitimate injury, but they end up becoming dependent on the pain pills,” said DeKalb Police Cmdr. Steve Lekkas (shown), a driver behind the Hope program. “It leads to doctor shopping, and trying to find more sources for prescription pills when you can no longer get a prescription.”
Lekkas said pedestrian injuries can be a gateway to addiction, given pharmaceutical companies' practices.
“You could go in for a sprained ankle and end up coming out with 90 norcos,” he said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Drug Enforcement Administration to Cut Opioid Production by 20 Percent in 2018

Dec 21, 2017 | The Mighty

By Erin Migdol

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced last month that they would be decreasing the number of opioids produced in 2018 by 20 percent.
The new quota was first proposed in August, and a public comment period followed. The final quota order, published on November 8 and signed by Robert W. Patterson, acting administrator of the DEA, says that the DEA received over a hundred comments that expressed concern that the proposed 20 percent reduction would adversely affect the availability of pain-relieving prescription drugs for people with chronic pain. These comments, however, did not impact the final quota.
“These comments were general in nature, and raised issues of specific medical illnesses and medical treatment, and therefore are outside of the scope of this Final Order for 2018,” the order said. “As a result, these 106 comments did not provide new discrete data for consideration, and do not impact the original analysis involved in establishing the 2018 aggregate production quotas.”
DEA spokesperson Barbara Carreno told The Mighty that the DEA’s quota is reactive and follows demand, looking at a variety of factors from the previous year to determine how many opioids will be produced the following year. The number of prescriptions written, sales by manufacturers and distributors, the amount of leftover inventory and the number of disposed materials are entered into a formula created by Congress under the Controlled Substances Act, which determines what the quota should be.
Next year’s 20 percent reduction follows a period of five years, from 2013 to 2016, when the DEA raised the quota by 25 percent to make sure it was not responsible for any shortages. But Carreno said nobody used the increased inventory and the Food and Drug Administration did not find evidence of a shortage, so the quota was reduced by 25 percent in 2017. She said the 2018 quota should not affect people using opioids legitimately for chronic pain.
For chronic pain patients who have experienced shortages of their opioid medication, Carreno said that’s the result of decisions made by manufacturers and distributors, such as distributors who set their own quotas of what they’re going to sell to pharmacies.
“It’s not like we [at the DEA] just decide, ‘Wow, there’s a problem with that, we’re going to cut it by 50 percent,'” Carreno said, adding:
I think lot of people don’t recognize that our mission is to guarantee the availability of controlled substances for legitimate purposes. And all the efforts we do to reduce diversion is towards that end — to make sure these medications are available to the people who legitimately need them and are not being diverted to the street.
Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, told The Mighty it’s hard to tell what effect the new quota will have on chronic pain patients or the opioid crisis. Much of opioid addiction has moved to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
“One hopes that these rules simply help sharpen our focus on a real problem without creating new ones,” Galea said.
The fight against the opioid crisis has led to an increased stigma against opioids, state laws that limit opioid prescriptions and pressure on doctors to prescribe fewer opioids, which can leave chronic pain patients feeling like collateral damage and concerned that the 2018 quota doesn’t take their experiences into account.
Mikki Ingram, a Mighty contributor who lives with fibromyalgia, told The Mighty she can’t get behind the new quota 100 percent, and is concerned that the DEA isn’t considering the chronic pain community. She feels the DEA’s anti-opioid objective contributes to the idea that anyone who takes opioids is “just looking to get high.”
“It looks almost as though they are ‘kicking the can down the road’ some more,” Ingram said. “I hope that, at some point soon, they begin to openly discuss all aspects of this issue. The chronic pain community needs to be included in this discussion and, thus far, we haven’t been outside of ourselves.”

Return to headline | Return to top
North Carolina accuses drugmakers Insys of scheme to push opioid

Dec 21, 2017 | Reuters

By Nate Raymond

North Carolina sued Insys Therapeutics Inc on Thursday, accusing the pharmaceutical company of illegally pushing a powerful fentanyl-based cancer pain medicine called Subsys to boost profits amid the U.S. opioid epidemic.
The lawsuit announced by North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein comes amid a federal investigation that has led to charges against several former executives accused of engaging in a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe Subsys.
Stein accused Insys of paying kickbacks to doctors to promote and prescribe Subsys for uses other than treating cancer pain and of deceiving insurers into covering prescriptions for the company's product.
"As we allege in our complaint, Insys carried out an extensive, coordinated scheme of kickbacks, deception and fraud in the marketing of its drug, Subsys," Stein said at a press conference in Raleigh, North Carolina that was streamed online.
Chandler, Arizona-based Insys did not respond to requests for comment. It has said that it has taken steps to prevent past mistakes from happening again and has stressed that Subsys made up 0.02 percent of opioid prescriptions in 2016.
Thursday's lawsuit, filed in a North Carolina state court, came as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that opioids were involved in 42,249 overdose deaths in 2016, up 28 percent from a year earlier.
Insys has found itself at the center of investigations focused on Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray intended for cancer patients that contains fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
In October, federal prosecutors in Boston brought charges against billionaire Insys founder John Kapoor, adding him to a case filed last year against six former Insys executives and managers initially charged, including former Chief Executive Michael Babich.
Prosecutors said that beginning in 2012, Kapoor, Babich and others schemed to pay speaker fees and other bribes to medical practitioners to prescribe Subsys and to fraudulently induce insurers into approving payment for it.
Kapoor, Babich and the others have pleaded not guilty. Several other ex-Insys employees and medical practitioners have also faced charges related to Subsys.
Insys has said it is in settlement talks with the U.S. Justice Department and has estimated the minimum amount it may have to pay is $150 million.
It previously agreed to pay $9.45 million to resolve investigations by attorneys general in Oregon, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Illinois. It also faces lawsuits by attorneys general in Arizona, New Jersey and New Mexico.

Return to headline | Return to top

Broadcast Media Coverage

Chicago Tonight

Dec 21, 2017 | WTTW (PBS)

By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534271?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: five suburban counties are taking big pharma to court over the opioid crisis that killed thousands of chicago area drug users in the last six years. the groups of states attorneys say numerous pharmaceutical companies marketed the drugs as safe knowing they were not. brandis friedman joins us with more. which counties? >> all of the collar counties, dupage, cane, mchenry, will and lake filed similar lawsuits 8:06 PMin their own respective counties they will be state lawsuits and not federal against these pharmaceutical companies. the crisis began almost 20 years ago since 1999 the number of prescription opioid-related deaths quadrupled and the number of people needing medication for pain has not changed. the pharmaceutical companies including abbott, purdue, janzen, and others, they misrepresented the drugs use to doctors and patients knowing their addictive properties. >> these drugs were developed by pharmaceutical companies for cancer patients. and short-term use for post surgical pain. doctors believing the marketing campaigns that the drugs were safe, prescribed them to their patients for longer term use in non-cancer-caused pain. in many cases they created drug addicts. it is outrageous that so many people have died because of a prescription drug that for years 8:07 PMwas marketed as safe. >> some of the drugs we are talking about oxycontin, vicodin and generic names, hydrocodone and fentanyl. the attorneys say once someone is addicted to the prescription drugs and cannot get access to them that is when they turn to heroin. >> brandis what are the lawsuits asking for? >> the attorneys want the pharmaceutical companies to stop what they believe to be the unfair practices in marketing but the suit does not set a monetary amount the damage is ongoing. though the counties make the case each have spent millions of taxpayer dollars in substance abuse treatment services and emergency department services as well as the other economic and social costs that come with victimization, lost productivity and criminal justice. they want compensatory and punitive damages and point to the profits they believe the pharmaceutical company are makes off the sale of the drugs. 8:08 PMthe companies together made $8 billion of that $3 billion went to purdue pharmaceutical alone the maker of oxycontin and it is a company that has been cited before. in 2007, the purdue company was fined, $635 million by the food and drug administration because they withheld the studies that they had that showed how addictive oxycontin was. they paid that $635 million like it was coffee money. so the profits are obscene and that is what is driving this. the overproduction of these opioids has been publicized for years. >> so how are the pharmaceutical companies responding to the lawsuits? >> i heard back from a couple of them. abbott laboratories one of the companies named in the suit of course they sent us in a short statement saying... you will recall abbott spun off 8:09 PMthe u.s. research based pharma business in 2013. also we heard from janzen a johnson & johnson company says quote... now it goes on to say that janzen opioid products amount to less than 1% of prescriptions written per year and dozens lawsuits are being filed around the country and the approach is being likened to the fight against big tobacco. >> the actions alleged in the complaints cost the plaintiffs who are in reality illinois taxpayers, millions of dollars and that cost continues to rise. the complaints filed this morning allege that for more than 20 years, the defendants 8:10 PMdeveloped and executed a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign for opioid drugs that harkens back to the deceptive and illegal practices the tobacco industry used. >> and abbott says it stopped co-promoting with purdue 14 years ago but the problem is almost 20 years old and the complaints complain how the arrangement helped make oxycontin in the largest selling opioid in the nation and abbott received 30% of sales. and just last week the trade organization pharmaceutical research and manufacturers of america or pharma, announced a multimillion dollar initiative to address the opioid crisis partnering with the addiction policy forum and introduced proposals to tackle the problem like limiting the supply of medications to seven days and mandating prescriber training and eliminating coverage barriers to receive addiction treatment.

Return to headline | Return to top
CBS 2 Morning News

Dec 22, 2017 | WBBM (CBS)

By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534409?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: chicago area prosecutors put drugmakers on notice filing suit over the opioid epidemic. prosecutors from five counties, late, king, dupage, will, in mchenry filed a lawsuit claiming that drug companies are intentionally deceiving doctors and consumers about the risks of opioid drugs. in many cases, addiction starts with prescription painkillers and ends with heroine interventional. >> want to hold them accountable with the destruction and devastation that they have caused for our community. >> everyone in this room could fall victim to an opioid addiction. >> among those named in the suit, purdue pharma, endo, janzen, which told us that they believe that the allegations are unfounded.

Return to headline | Return to top
News at 8:30

Dec 21, 2017 | CLTV (CLTV)

By Chicago, IL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534276?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: ive suburban counties in illinois filed lawsuits thursday against more than seven pharmaceutical companies, joining a growing effort to hold manufacturers accountable for the nations opioid epidemic. prosecutors in dupage, kane, will, mchenry and lake counties said in a statement that the 'aggressive and fraudulent marketing of prescription opioid painkillers' has led to a 'corporate- caused drug epidemic.' officials said they filed the actions to stem the flow of opioids into communities and hold the manufacturers accountable for the damage done. the lawsuits do not specify the amount of damages sought. 'the source of this crisis is not street corners,' lake county states attorney michael nerheim said at a news conference in wheaton announcing the litigation. 'its in boardrooms.' 9:34 PMthe illinois department of public health reports that more illinois residents died from opioid- related drug overdoses in 2014 than from homicide or motor vehicle deaths. officials at thursdays briefing suggested the problem has worsened since then. among the companies named in the suit are purdue pharma, abbott laboratories, teva pharmaceuticals usa, cephalon, johnson & johnson, janssen pharmaceuticals and endo health solutions. don't let the parade of oxygen tanks fool you...this group of fifteen is hooked up so they can sing their hearts out. nats of warm up i just love it. i look forward to it all the time. if it wasn't for this group, i don't know what i would do. less than a year ago...things were different for most in this group...all ive suburban counties in illinois filed lawsuits thursday against more than seven pharmaceutical companies, joining a growing effort to hold manufacturers accountable for the nations opioid epidemic. prosecutors in dupage, kane, will, mchenry and lake counties said in a statement that the 'aggressive and fraudulent marketing of prescription opioid painkillers' has led to a 'corporate- caused drug epidemic.' officials said they filed the actions to stem the flow of opioids into communities and hold the manufacturers accountable for the damage done. the lawsuits do not specify the amount of damages sought. 'the source of this crisis is not street corners,' lake county states attorney michael nerheim said at a news conference in wheaton announcing the litigation. 'its in boardrooms.' the illinois department of public health reports that more illinois residents died from opioid- related drug overdoses in 2014 than from homicide or motor vehicle deaths. officials at thursdays briefing suggested the problem has worsened since then. among the companies named

Return to headline | Return to top
WPBF 25 News at 9:00am

Dec 22, 2017 | WPBF (ABC)

By West Palm Beach, FL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534386?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: now to a landmark move in the battle against the opioid epidemic. delray beach has announced it is the first municipality in the state to file a federal lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies. tiffany: the city claims those companies violated federal law through what it calls deceptive marketing. the lawsuit targets nine pharmaceutical companies they say " used big tobacco-styl marketing of prescription drugs to increase sales, leading to otherwise avoidable deaths." in 2016, the city says emergency responders were called out to nearly 700 overdoses. this lawsuit comes after a startling new report. the cdc says the number of opiod related deaths doubled in 2017. just over 42,000 deaths were determined to be from opioids. that's more people than the number of people who died from breast cancer each year. in its continued effort to stop the number of people who abuse opioids, the trump administration has created a new, senior level position. the job of director of opioid enforcement and prevention has still not been filled.

Return to headline | Return to top
45 News Morning

Dec 22, 2017 | KSTC (KSTC)

By Minneapolis, MN

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534392?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: tracking the fight against opioid abuse, the band of ojibwe is suing the largest drug manufacturers and prescription drug distributors. in a statement the tribe accuses companies of using deceptive marketing tactics with the intent to maximize the profits while minimizing both the addictive nature of the drugs and the health risks to patients. several minnesota county governments have also filed lawsuits with similar claims against several drug companies. representatives for the companies have denied any wrongdoing. meanwhile the state of minnesota has issued more than 60 new guidelines for prescribers to seek alternatives to prescribing addictive drugs.

Return to headline | Return to top
Eyewitness News This Morning

Dec 22, 2017 | KSCW (CW)

By Wichita, KS

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534391?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: sedgwick county becomes the first county in kansas to sue drug distributors for their role in the opioidepidemic. the lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court mentions more than 20 distributors. county commissioners say they would like to get some money back from the drug companies for what the county calls deceptive marketing practices or unlawful perscriptions. there were more than 700 opioid related deaths in sedgwick county between 20-12 and 20-16.

Return to headline | Return to top
Channel 2 Action News at 5:00AM

Dec 22, 2017 | WSB (ABC)

By Atlanta, GA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31534415?token=565f9067-201a-4923-97f0-461117cd9414
Rough Transcript: some are concerned it is already too congested and the project is being rushed. >> we did not have a opportunity to talk before you deliberated which is also, it does not give me a lot of peace. we believe there will be engagement going forward. >> atlanta gave approval in a closed-door meeting on thursday. check our questions about technology identifying people traveling through airport >> they are testing facial recognition screening. some lawmakers are calling on the department of homeland security to stop testing a program. congress did not give the department the legal authority to use that technology. >>> a county is doing drugmakers over the cost of that opioid cris. they by -- filed a lawsuit on wednesday. the county is suing her mystical counties -- distributors behind drugs like oxycontin, fentanyl and percocet. this files a similar lawsuitwith 30 defendants.

Return to headline | Return to top

Add recipients

Suggested