Preview Newsletter
Opioid Litigation Media Report - 12/22/17 - 1/2/18
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Cook County jumps into legal fray vs pharmaceutical makers, hires Simmons, Meyers & Flowers to sue over 'opioids'
Dec 27, 2017 | Cook County Record (IL)
By Jonathan Bilyk
Cook County, the second largest county in the U.S., has added its name to the ever-growing list of local governments demanding the makers of some of the most prescribed opioid painkillers pay out, saying the companies owe big money for costs the county has incurred in treating painkiller addiction and dealing with its aftermath at the county’s hospitals and other institutions. -
Chicago-area county sues opioid manufacturers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Hill
By Nathaniel Weixel
Officials in one the nation’s largest counties on Wednesday filed lawsuits against some of the country’s biggest drug manufacturers over their allegedly aggressive marketing of prescription opioid painkillers. -
Cook County sues pharmaceutical companies over opioid epidemic
Dec 27, 2017 | The Chicago Tribune
By Bill Ruthhart
Cook County followed the path of five suburban counties Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against some of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies that aims to hold them responsible for the nation’s opioid epidemic. -
Cook County sues to stop Opioid epidemic
Dec 29, 2017 | The Chicago Crusader (IL)
By Staff
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx recently announced the County has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies over their manufacture and aggressive marketing of prescription opioid painkillers and the resulting climbing overdose and fatality rates ravaging families and communities throughout Cook County. -
Opioid lawsuits: Several Illinois counties sue drug companies, doctors; blame them for deadly drug crisis
Jan 27, 2018 | WLS (IL)
By Craig Wall
Several counties in Illinois are suing pharmaceutical companies and physicians over the consequences of excessive opioid use. -
Lake County Sues Opioid Makers
Dec 26, 2017 | Daily North Shore (IL)
By Steve Sadin
Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim filed suit against 12 drug producers and three promoters of the manufacturers’ products December 21 in Lake County Court in Waukegan to hold them accountable for their role in the growing opioid epidemic across the country. -
Will County among those filing opioids lawsuits
Dec 22, 2017 | Daily Journal (IL)
By Jeff Bonty
Will County, along with four other suburban counties, joined the growing list of state and county governments filing lawsuits against some of the nation's largest pharmaceutical companies and physicians over fraudulent marketing of prescription opioid painkillers. -
City sues drug makers for opioid crisis 'ravaging Lafayette'
Dec 22, 2017 | Journal & Courier (IN)
By Dave Bangert
Lafayette has joined a number of other cities across the country by suing pharmaceutical companies and distributors, claiming they helped create an opioid addiction crisis causing havoc in the community. -
Add Elwood, Alexandria to those suing over opioids
Dec 26, 2017 | The Herald Bulletin (IN)
By Ken de la Bastide
The cities of Elwood and Alexandria are joining a list that includes Madison County and other cities in Indiana in pursuing legal action against the drug companies and distributors for their role in causing the opioid crisis. -
Hammond opioid lawsuit joins dozens of similar cases before Ohio federal judge
Dec 23, 2017 | The Northwest Indiana Times
By Steve Garrison
A lawsuit by the city of Hammond targeting opioid distributors and manufacturers has been consolidated with dozens of other similar lawsuits in a federal court in Ohio. -
It’s Sedgwick County vs. Big Pharma in multimillion-dollar painkiller lawsuit
Dec 22, 2017 | The Wichita Eagle (KS)
By Dion Lefler
Seeking to recoup millions of dollars of public costs of opioid addiction, Sedgwick County sued some of the nation’s biggest drug companies Thursday, accusing them of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering on prescription painkillers such as Lortab, OxyContin and fentanyl. -
22 plaintiffs join Summit County suit against pharmaceutical companies
Dec 22, 2017 | WKSU (OH)
By Amanda Rabinowitz and Philip De Oliveria
Twenty-two towns, cities, and public agencies in Summit County are joining a lawsuit against opioid makers and distributors. -
Questions linger in state opioid lawsuit
Dec 26, 2017 | Dickinson County News (IA)
By Seth Boyes
Rising reports of opioid addiction in the state prompted the Iowa State Association of Counties to request resolutions of support from each of Iowa's 99 about a potential lawsuit against major pharmaceutical companies. -
Counties may join suit against opioid-makers
Dec 27, 2017 | DL-Online (MN)
By Nbowe and Shannon Geisen
Minnesota's 87 counties are considering litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors for being complicit and complacent in the opioid addiction epidemic. -
Opioid crisis: Miller, other AR counties sue drug companies
Dec 28, 2017 | KSLA News (AR)
By Staff
An alarming statistic ranks Arkansas the second-highest state in the nation for the number of opioid prescriptions. -
Delray sues Fortune 500 opioid makers for ‘worst drug scourge ever’
Dec 22, 2017 | Palm Beach Post (FL)
By Lulu Ramadan
Delray Beach filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against some of the largest drug-makers and distributors in the country, holding them responsible, in part, for an opioid epidemic that has cost local taxpayers millions of dollars. -
Jeff Davis considers retaining attorneys for opioid litigation
Dec 23, 2017 | American Press (LA)
By Doris Maricle
The Jeff Davis Parish Police Jury is considering a measure to participate in pending opioid crisis litigation. -
Nashville sues opioid manufacturers to recoup costs of fighting epidemic
Dec 23, 2017 | Tennessean
By Joey Garrison
Metro government filed suit late Friday against multiple manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids, making Nashville the latest local municipality in Tennessee to turn to court to try to recover public dollars spent in the national opioid epidemic. -
Metro files lawsuit against prescription opioid manufacturers
Dec 23, 2017 | WSMV.com (TN)
By Edward Burch
Each day, more than 100 Americans are killed by opioids. -
SHERIFF EDDIE SOILEAU SUES DRUG COMPANIES OVER OPIOID EPIDEMIC
Dec 27, 2017 | Ville Platte Today (LA)
By Elizabeth West
On December 15, 2017, a lawsuit naming Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau as the plaintiff was filed against several pharmaceutical companies for false advertising as it relates to opioids. -
City, county join class-action opioid suit with trial lawyers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Neshoba Democrat (MS)
By Staff
Philadelphia and Neshoba County are joining a nationwide class-action lawsuit against distributors of opioids in wake of what officials describe as a costly pandemic of abuse. -
Mobile Files Lawsuit Against Drug Companies
Dec 28, 2017 | WKRG News (AL)
By Katarina Luketich
The City of Mobile filed a public nuisance lawsuit against some of the largest manufacturers of prescription opioids and their related companies as well as wholesale drug distributors. -
Nashua Becomes Second N.H. City to Take Opioid Companies to Court
Dec 22, 2017 | NHPR
By Casey McDermott
Nashua is now the second New Hampshire city to sue pharmaceutical giants over their alleged role fueling the community’s opioid crisis. The city’s complaint is almost identical to one filed on behalf of the city of Manchester in September. -
Putnam joins county opioid suit
Dec 26, 2017 | Mid-Hudson News (NY)
By Staff
Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell signed the resolution for the county to join the multi-county lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and distributors for alleged fraudulent and negligent practices regarding opioid sales and uses. -
Wyoming County to sue drug manufacturers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Citizens' Voice (PA)
By C.J. Marshall
Wyoming County Commissioners on Tuesday voted to join a lawsuit being filed by other counties throughout Pennsylvania against five drug manufacturers and three wholesale drug distributors for their part in the opioid epidemic. -
The opioid crisis will become even more deadly (EDITORIAL)
Jan 2, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
As bad as it is, the U.S. drug crisis is almost certain to get worse before it gets better. -
Critical Mass: A 'Dream Team' Aims to Lead Opioid MDL
Dec 22, 2017 | Law.com
By Amanda Bronstad
Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com’s new briefing on class actions and mass torts. I’m Amanda Bronstad in Los Angeles. As the year draws to an end, opioid litigation revs up: On Wednesday, a proposed plaintiffs attorney team that looks like a “Who’s Who” of the mass torts bar has moved to spearhead the federal multidistrict litigation – but not without some pushback. Lawyers in the NFL concussion case want to depose the expert who recommended caps on attorney fees in the landmark litigation. And the American Association for Justice came out with a first-time report of the worst corporate conduct of 2017 (think Wells Fargo, Equifax, Fox News and pretty much all of Wall Street.) And do you still have some gifts to buy this holiday season? Check out this list of gifts that might be just a bit too, well, dangerous. -
The Foster Care System Is Flooded With Children Of The Opioid Epidemic
Dec 23, 2017 | NPR Weekend Edition
By Scott Simon
The U.S. foster care system is overwhelmed, in part because America's opioid crisis is overwhelming. Thousands of children have had to be taken out of the care of parents or a parent who is addicted. -
Robert Gebelhoff: Complicity a big factor in America’s opioid crisis (OPINION)
Dec 19, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Robert Gebelhoff
For years, the opioid crisis was described as one of negligence. In this narrative, doctors overprescribed pills that shouldn’t have gone to patients and pharmaceutical companies overzealously promoted medications while playing down the risks. -
Editorial: The epidemic that's shortening American lives
Dec 22, 2017 | The Chicago Tribune
By Staff
The story of modern life has been one of people enjoying better health and living longer. In the United States, life expectancy at birth has inched up almost every year over the past half century, going from under 70 years in 1963 to nearly 79 years in 2014. But the progress that once seemed automatic has stopped. Last year, for the second consecutive year, life expectancy declined. -
Painkiller addictions often start in the doctor's office, but prescribers are rarely punished
Dec 24, 2017 | The Post and Courier (SC)
By Mary Katherine Wideman
To hear Dr. Charles Bruyere tell it, his problem was he had too much empathy. That’s why he doled out painkillers at such a high rate, why he landed in jail and why he was stripped of his medical license, he said. -
Editorial: Lawsuit may help recovery of those affected by opioid addiction
Dec 26, 2017 | Greenfield Recorder (MA)
By Staff
Treating America’s opioid addiction crisis is, tragically, creating a growth industry that provides long-term intervention and treatment for millions of our fellow citizens. But who is going to pay the tab? Families? Insurance companies? State, local and federal governments? -
Opioid crisis straining local, state child welfare system
Dec 26, 2017 | Times-Gazette (OH)
By Mike Buettner
The opioid epidemic is impacting the child welfare system locally and across Ohio with more children in custody than ever before. -
We cannot litigate our way out of the opioid crisis (OPINION)
Dec 26, 2017 | Kentucky Today
By Mark Wohlander
More than twenty years after Purdue Pharma launched its first advertising campaign to tout a new miracle drug known as OxyContin, state governments have scrambled to find a political solution to end the opioid crisis in our country. -
Tribune Editorial: Best drug policy will be built on reducing demand, not supply
Dec 27, 2017 | The Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
By Staff
So how bad is this opioid thing? -
Opinion: Opioid lawsuit would be a step in right direction
Dec 28, 2017 | Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
By Tuscaloosa News Editorial Board via AP
For the past few years, NFL football players have worn pink during the month of October in an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer. The league moved last year to end the practice, but you still see players wearing the color. It is a worthwhile cause that has led to increased donations. But breast cancer, as bad as it is, now kills fewer Americans each year than opioids. -
These 12 Stories Show How Deadly The Opioid Epidemic Was In 2017
Dec 28, 2017 | BuzzFeed News
By Azeen Ghorayshi
2017 was the year fentanyl became a household name. Here are 12 stories that show just how bad the US opioid epidemic has gotten, the hucksters who have profited, and how much it’ll take to get us out of it. -
China says US not doing enough to cut demand for opioids
Dec 28, 2017 | Steven Jiang
By CNN
China on Thursday turned the table on Washington in addressing the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States. -
America's health is declining -- and corporations are stoking this crisis (OPINION)
Dec 27, 2017 | CNN
By Jeffrey Sachs
America's powerful corporations made a killing with the passage of the Republican tax cuts. The tax cuts will hand trillions of dollars to the companies and their moneyed owners following a massive corporate lobbying campaign. -
Opioid Policy Becomes Personal For One Health Official After Husband's Death
Dec 29, 2017 | NPR All Things Considered
By Sam Gringlas
On a Monday afternoon in October, a panel of Iowa state legislators gathered in the statehouse to discuss the opioid epidemic. -
Opioid abuse in the U.S. is so bad it’s lowering life expectancy. Why hasn’t the epidemic hit other countries?
Dec 28, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Amanda Erickson
For the second year in a row, life expectancy in the United States has dropped. -
Addiction Experts: Drug Crisis May Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Dec 27, 2017 | The Fix
By Kelly Burch
According to experts, the demand for drugs is still growing despite various interventions to curb the crisis. -
Authorities Are Cracking Down on Opioid-Peddling Doctors
Jan 1, 2018 | TIME / AP
By Sadie Gurman
The pain clinic tucked into the corner of a low-slung suburban strip mall was an open secret. -
Cases to Watch in 2018
Jan 1, 2018 | LAW360
By Dani Kass / Emily Field
Attorneys will be closely watching the multidistrict litigation recently formed for the deluge of lawsuits filed by local governments over the opioid epidemic, alleging that makers of opioid pain medication oversold the drugs’ benefits and downplayed their risks while marketing them to doctors. -
MSNBC Live with Ali Velshi
Dec 29, 2017 | MSNBC (MSNBC)
By National Programming
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590455?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
WTVA 9 News on WLOV
Dec 29, 2017 | WLOV (FOX)
By Columbus, MS
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590413?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
Good Morning Quad Cities
Dec 29, 2017 | WQAD (ABC)
By Davenport, IA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590421?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
News at 10
Dec 29, 2017 | CLTV (CLTV)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590432?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
wusa 9 News at Noon
Dec 28, 2017 | WUSA (CBS)
By Washington D.C.
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590459?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
Fox 26 News at 8AM
Dec 28, 2017 | KRIV (FOX)
By Houston, TX
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590671?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
NBC 5 News at 6am
Dec 28, 2017 | WMAQ (NBC)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590674?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
WGN Midday News
Dec 27, 2017 | WGN
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590437?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
Chicago Tonight
Dec 27, 2017 | WTTW (PBS)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590434?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
Channel 2 Action News at 6:00AM
Jan 26, 2018 | WSB (ABC)
By Atlanta, GA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590684?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
News 9 This Morning
Jan 23, 2018 | WMUR (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590687?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689 -
NewsCenter 5 Weekend EyeOpener
Dec 23, 2017 | WCVB (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590690?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Midwest (IL, IN, KS, KY, NE, OH)
Southeast (AR, FL, LA, MS, TN)
Northeast (NH, NY, PA)
Commentary and FYIs
Broadcast Media Coverage
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Dec 27, 2017 | Cook County Record (IL)
By Jonathan Bilyk
Cook County, the second largest county in the U.S., has added its name to the ever-growing list of local governments demanding the makers of some of the most prescribed opioid painkillers pay out, saying the companies owe big money for costs the county has incurred in treating painkiller addiction and dealing with its aftermath at the county’s hospitals and other institutions.
And to help prosecute the case, the county has hired a St. Charles-based trial law firm known for pressing large class actions against companies over product liability, and a New York-based law firm, which has gained prominence prosecuting asbestos exposure cases in downstate Madison County, and which was recently selected by a group of fellow trial lawyers to help lead the nationwide consolidated effort to press the opioid painkiller makers in federal court.
On Dec. 27, lawyers with the firms of Meyers & Flowers LLC, of west suburban St. Charles, and Simmons Hanley & Conroy, of New York, together with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against a number of pharmaceutical companies, who made and promoted for sale such popular name-brand painkillers as OxyContin and Percocet, and their generic equivalents, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, among others.
The Cook County lawsuit names as defendants drugmakers Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue Pharma; Lake Forest-based Abbott Laboratories; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and its corporate parent, Johnson & Johnson; and Malvern, Pa.-based Endo Pharmaceuticals, as well as several corporate entities associated with those companies.
The lawsuit is essentially similar to a host of others brought across the country in a wave being likened by trial lawyers to the litigation decades ago against tobacco companies over the public health effects of cigarettes. That litigation resulted in settlements worth billions, resulting in huge payments to states and big paydays for the trial lawyers hired to help prosecute the cases. Some prominent trial lawyers, such as Jay Edelson, of the Chicago-based firm of Edelson P.C., said the cases mark an opportunity for law firms to help local governments, labor unions and other organizations wrest windfalls from “Big Pharma,” ostensibly to fund programs to address what government officials have called a growing public health problem affecting communities of all kinds across the U.S.
Locally, the city of Chicago has been pressing its case against those same pharmaceutical companies in federal court since 2014. The city has been represented in that case by attorneys with the firms of Motley Rice, of Washington, D.C., and Wexler Wallace, of Chicago.
And a few days before Cook County filed its lawsuit, several suburban counties, including Lake, Kane, Will and McHenry, all filed their own actions against the same drugmakers. In those actions, all but Lake County also hired the Simmons firm to represent them.
In all of the lawsuits, the allegations are similar, accusing the drugmakers of falsely marketing their drugs to doctors, promoting their use to the point addiction spread through communities, leading to big costs for local governments and their taxpayers to treat addiction and its after-effects.
In the Cook County suit, the county notes it annually incurs costs totaling in the millions of dollars to deal with opioid addiction. The county’s lawsuit cites a county report showing Cook County’s public hospital system handled more than 5,000 “opioid-related emergencies in 2016 … up from 1,000 in 2006.” The lawsuit said the Cook County Sheriff’s Office has treated “more than 5,000 inmates … for opioid withdrawals within the last year,” and has adapted addiction-related programs as part of “its new role … to contend with the growing issue of opioid addiction.”
Further, the county pointed to a growing number of opioid overdose deaths and criminal acts committed in relation to opioids.
Nationally, the lawsuit cites a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating the “national impact of prescription opioid overdoses, abuse and dependence” at $78.5 billion, including “lost productivity” at $42 billion, “health insurance” at $26 billion, “criminal justice” at $7.6 billion and “substance abuse treatment” at $2.8 billion.
“The economic impact of prescription opioid overdoses on the County is well in line with national trends,” Cook County said in its lawsuit. “As a direct and foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ egregious conduct, the County paid, and continues to pay, millions of dollars for healthcare costs that stem from prescription opioid dependency created by Defendants’ deceptive marketing campaign.”
In its lawsuit, Cook County has asked the court to award the county compensatory damages, to be tripled under state consumer fraud, insurance fraud and deceptive practices laws, unspecified punitive damages and attorney fees, among other damages.
“Opioid deaths in Cook County are growing at an alarming rate. This is a public health crisis affecting nearly every community in the county for which we must find a solution,” Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle said in a prepared statement released by the county Wednesday. “We believe a good start is to aggressively confront one of the root causes of this national epidemic: the pharmaceutical companies and those paid by the pharmaceutical companies who put profits before public health and safety.”
“The impact that opioids are having on Cook County cannot be ignored,” said Foxx in that same statement. “We see it in every part of the county, and the human cost is truly staggering. We must act in the public interest and hold accountable those who have been complicit in the creation of this epidemic."
Spokespeople for two of the pharmaceutical company defendants denied the county's allegations, noting their products are approved for patient use by federal regulators at the Food and Drug Administration.
“We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and are dedicated to being part of the solution," said Bob Josephson, spokesman for Purdue Pharma. "As a company grounded in science, we must balance patient access to FDA-approved medicines, while working collaboratively to solve this public health challenge. Although our products account for approximately 2 percent of the total opioid prescriptions, as a company, we’ve distributed the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, developed three of the first four FDA-approved opioid medications with abuse-deterrent properties and partner with law enforcement to ensure access to naloxone.
We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”
Josephson also rejected the comparison raised by trial lawyers and the local governments between the prescription painkillers and health hazards of tobacco.
"Unlike the past tobacco litigation, our medicines are approved by FDA, prescribed by doctors, and dispensed by pharmacists, as treatments for patients suffering from severe pain," Josephson said.
A spokesman for Janssen similarly called attention to the federal regulation of their products.
"Responsibly used opioid-based pain medicines give doctors and patients important choices to help manage the debilitating effects of chronic pain. At the same time, we recognize opioid abuse and addiction is a serious public health issue that must be addressed," said spokesman William Foster.
"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. According to independent surveillance data, 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, including generics. Addressing opioid abuse will require collaboration among many stakeholders and we will continue to work with federal, state and local officials to support solutions."
A spokeswoman for Abbott noted her company does not sell prescription medications in the U.S. any longer, and "discontinued co-promotion with Purdue nearly 14 years ago."
Endo Pharmaceuticals did not reply to a request for comment.
The fate of Cook County’s lawsuit, as well as those pressed by the city of Chicago and collar counties, may be tied up with that of most other opioid lawsuits now pending across the country.
On Dec. 20, the federal Judicial Panel on Multi-district Litigation ordered the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against the drugmakers to be consolidated with 180 other similar actions for proceedings before a federal judge in Cleveland.
That decision came about a month after a federal judge in Chicago slapped a hold on the action, until the JPML could rule on a request made in September by a lawyer in West Virginia representing nearly four dozen cities and other government agencies suing opioid drugmakers. In that petition, attorney James Peterson, of Hill Peterson Carper Bee & Deitzler, said consolidating the cases into one giant case, known as a multi-district litigation, or MDL, could save the courts and participants time and uneven outcomes, as different judges could see the same facts, yet come to markedly different conclusions on questions of law, evidence and procedure.
In the wake of the JPML’s decision, lawyers representing those counties, cities and other local governments voted to select Paul Hanley of Simmons Hanley Conroy, Joe Rice of Motley Rice and Paul Farrell of West Virginia-based Greene, Ketchum, Farrell, Bailey & Tweel, to serve as lead counsel on the opioid MDL.
Among other notable litigation, Rice played a lead role in the talks that led to the $246 billion tobacco settlement in the 1990s.
The Simmons Hanley firm is known for its work in securing an estimated $5 billion in jury verdicts and settlements, primarily related to asbestos exposure and mesothelioma lawsuits.
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Chicago-area county sues opioid manufacturers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Hill
By Nathaniel Weixel
Officials in one the nation’s largest counties on Wednesday filed lawsuits against some of the country’s biggest drug manufacturers over their allegedly aggressive marketing of prescription opioid painkillers.
Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, joins an increasing number of cities, states and counties suing drug manufacturers amid the United States’s spiraling opioid epidemic.
According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, 647 people died from drug overdose deaths involving opioids in Cook County in 2015. The number of overdose deaths jumped 70 percent in 2016.
As of the start of December, there have been 847 documented opioid-related deaths this year, the county said.
“This is a public health crisis affecting nearly every community in the County for which we must find a solution,” Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle said in a statement.
“We believe a good start is to aggressively confront one of the root causes of this national epidemic: the pharmaceutical companies and those paid by the pharmaceutical companies who put profits before public health and safety," Preckwinkle added.
The complaint seeks monetary damages for the millions of dollars in costs incurred annually as a result of the opioid crisis.
“The impact that opioids are having on Cook County cannot be ignored,” State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a statement. “We see it in every part of the County, and the human cost is truly staggering. We must act in the public interest and hold accountable those who have been complicit in the creation of this epidemic."
Defendants in the lawsuit include Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson.
Many of those same companies are facing subpoenas from a coalition of 41 state attorneys general seeking information about the role manufacturers may have played in making the crisis worse.
Link to complaint: https://www.scribd.com/document/367977092/Cook-County-Opioid-Complaint#from_embed
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Cook County sues pharmaceutical companies over opioid epidemic
Dec 27, 2017 | The Chicago Tribune
By Bill Ruthhart
Cook County followed the path of five suburban counties Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against some of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies that aims to hold them responsible for the nation’s opioid epidemic.
The lawsuit alleges “unlawful marketing” by the manufacturers, which the county contends has led to an “opioid crisis facing Cook County residents,” according to a county news release.
The lawsuit comes after prosecutors in DuPage, Kane, Will, McHenry and Lake counties filed their own lawsuits last week to join a growing nationwide effort to hold drug manufacturers responsible for unemployment, increased strain on social services, the tearing apart of families and crimes. The collar county lawsuits do not specify the exact amount of damages sought.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx called the human cost of the opioid crisis “truly staggering.”
In a news release, Board President Toni Preckwinkle explained why the county is suing.
“Opioid deaths are growing at an alarming rate. This is a public health crisis affecting nearly every community in the county for which we must find a solution,” Preckwinkle said. “We believe a good start is to aggressively confront one of the root causes of this national epidemic: the pharmaceutical companies and those paid by the pharmaceutical companies who put profits before public health and safety.”
In 2015, 647 people died in Cook County as the result of a drug overdose involving opioids, according to the county medical examiner’s office. In 2016, that number increased to 1,091 — a 70 percent increase. And last week, government figures were released that showed U.S. drug overdose deaths increasing by 21 percent in 2016, and for the second consecutive year, dragged down the life expectancy of Americans.
The Cook County lawsuit lists many of the same defendants as the suburban ones, including Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Endo Health Solutions. Representatives of the companies have defended their actions.
A spokeswoman for Janssen told the Chicago Tribune last week that the suburban lawsuits were “both legally and factually unfounded” and that “independent surveillance data” showed the company had a low rate of abuse with its medications.
The local lawsuits are part of a wave of civil cases that governments across the country have filed in federal and state courts against pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors. A key settlement emerged 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 that had not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Madigan said she would use the money to battle opioid abuse in the state.
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Cook County sues to stop Opioid epidemic
Dec 29, 2017 | The Chicago Crusader (IL)
By Staff
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx recently announced the County has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies over their manufacture and aggressive marketing of prescription opioid painkillers and the resulting climbing overdose and fatality rates ravaging families and communities throughout Cook County.
The complaint filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County seeks relief including compensatory and punitive damages for the millions of dollars in costs incurred annually as a result of the unlawful marketing practices of defendants which led to the opioid crisis facing Cook County residents. These costs include the rapidly increasing number of overdose patients being treated by Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS), opioid treatment and prevention programs operated by CCHHS at the Cook County Jail, and a dramatic increase in autopsies in opioid-related deaths conducted by the Medical Examiner which in 2016 accounted for more deaths than for gunshots and vehicular deaths combined.
“Opioid deaths in Cook County are growing at an alarming rate. This is a public health crisis affecting nearly every community in the County for which we must find a solution,” Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle said. “We believe a good start is to aggressively confront one of the root causes of this national epidemic: the pharmaceutical companies and those paid by the pharmaceutical companies who put profits before public health and safety.”
“The impact that opioids are having on Cook County cannot be ignored,” said State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. “We see it in every part of the County, and the human cost is truly staggering. We must act in the public interest and hold accountable those who have been complicit in the creation of this epidemic.”
Defendants in the Cook County lawsuit include: 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.; and Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
With more than 5.2 million residents, Cook County’s 30 townships and 130 municipalities are grappling with an ever-growing opioid epidemic. The detrimental effects of opioid addiction can be seen across every socioeconomic group and demographic in the County.
According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, in 2015, 647 persons died from drug overdose deaths involving opioids in Cook County. Opioid-related overdose deaths in the County rose to 1,091 in 2016, an increase of 70%. As of the beginning of December, there have been 847 documented opioid-related deaths in 2017 –- a number that is sure to grow, as it can take weeks to complete toxicology testing that confirms cause of death.
The County has had to dedicate significant resources to address the epidemic, causing it to divert funding from other necessary programs to pay for the substantial economic, administrative and social costs related to opioid addiction and abuse.
Cook County is represented by Simmons Hanly Conroy and Meyers & Flowers, two of the nation’s largest law firms focused on consumer protection and mass tort actions.
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Jan 27, 2018 | WLS (IL)
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.
Cook County files lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Cook County officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against pharmaceutical companies over opioid painkillers.Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx filed the lawsuit against several opioid manufacturers. Cook County officials cited aggressive marketing of opioids that resulted in a rise in overdose and fatality rates. The county is seeking compensatory and punitive damages to cover opioid treatment programs, costs to treat overdose patients and an increase in autopsies.
County data show there were about 650 opioid deaths in 2015, rising 70 percent to more than 1,090 in 2016. There have been about 850 deaths in 2017 as of the beginning of December.
Similar lawsuits have been filed around the U.S. and companies being sued have said they're already taking steps to curb opioid abuse.
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Lake County Sues Opioid Makers
Dec 26, 2017 | Daily North Shore (IL)
By Steve Sadin
Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim filed suit against 12 drug producers and three promoters of the manufacturers’ products December 21 in Lake County Court in Waukegan to hold them accountable for their role in the growing opioid epidemic across the country.
Though Lake County filed its own lawsuit, Nerheim, joined with state’s attorneys from DuPage, Kane, Will and McHenry counties to show solidarity in their resolve to end the crisis.
Nerheim made fighting the opioid epidemic a top priority when he took office five years ago. “The impact and effect of the five collar counties surrounding Chicago standing shoulder to shoulder shows we’re all serious about this,” said Nerheim in a DailyNorthShore interview. “By showing this we hope more will follow suit.”
Filing suit along with Nerheim as state’s attorney are Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran and Lake County Coroner Howard Cooper.
Defendants include Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, and companies affiliated with them. The American Academy of Pain Medicine, American Geriatrics Society and American Pain Society are named too.
Suits Are Part of Nationwide Movement
The five counties are part of a growing effort by local government to rein in drug manufacturers and hold them accountable for their actions. More than 200 governmental units have filed suit in federal court with dozens more doing the same in state court, according to a December 20 New York Times story. Attorneys general from 41 states are working together to find solutions as well.
The suit claims the drug companies engaged in a “campaign of unfairly, deceptively and fraudulently marketing prescription opioids in Lake County,” according to language contained in the complaint filed in court.
The three non-manufacturing defendants are accused of working with the drug makers to “promote opioids to doctors and patients, including elderly patients, as appropriate and safe for long-term use to treat chronic pain,” when that was not the case, according to the complaint.
While much of the litigation Nerheim oversees are criminal prosecutions, this is a civil lawsuit seeking money from the drug companies and injunctive relief to prevent the defendants from engaging in the conduct alleged in the lawsuit. He thinks civil litigation is the best way to deal with businesses that are harming the public.
“Our job is to hold people accountable for their actions,” said Nerheim. “We want to stop them from what they’re doing. We can’t put Purdue in jail,” he added referring to one of the corporate defendants. “The best thing to cut into their profits, make it too expensive for them to do this.”
Should the litigation yield results, Nerheim said, the drug companies rather than Lake County taxpayers will be paying for what he calls their misdeeds. Right now the county pays for treatment programs, the costs for law enforcement and in some cases for health care professionals to treat people among other things.
A victory in the lawsuit or a settlement will help shift some of the cost from the taxpayers to the drug companies, according to Nerheim. He said the need is growing because more people need treatment than the county has facilities. He cited the A Way Out a program as an example.
A Way Out allows drug users seeking treatment to walk into a police station, say they want treatment and be transported to a facility without fear of arrest, according to Nerheim.
“We are a resource-rich county and we’re running out of facilities. This all costs money and right now it is on the taxpayers,” he said, adding that a successful lawsuit will force drug companies to help pay.
While all five collar counties are taking action simultaneously, Nerheim said Lake County is taking a slightly different route. While the other four counties hired a private law firm to prosecute their claims, Nerheim said the Lake County state’s attorney’s office is leading the charge with the assistance of outside lawyers with expertise in the field.
Helping out with the case are attorneys from the Washington D.C. law firm of Motley Rice, LLC, and Highland Park-based Baizer Kolar P.C., according to Nerheim.
“I like the job they did helping Chicago in a similar case,” Nerheim said of Motley Rice. “It’s important to have Lake County lawyers involved too,” he added referring to Robert S. Baizer and Joseph E. Kolar. “They’ve been sworn in as special assistant state’s attorneys for this case.”
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Will County among those filing opioids lawsuits
Dec 22, 2017 | Daily Journal (IL)
By Jeff Bonty
Will County, along with four other suburban counties, joined the growing list of state and county governments filing lawsuits against some of the nation's largest pharmaceutical companies and physicians over fraudulent marketing of prescription opioid painkillers.
Officials from Will, McHenry, DuPage, Kane and Lake counties announced their plans at a news conference Thursday in Wheaton.
This comes three months after the national law firm of Simmons Hanly Conroy filed suit on behalf of Kankakee County.
Simmons Hanly Conroy, along with the firm of Meyers and Flowers, are representing the five counties.
"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."
In 2015, there were 237 opioid deaths combined in the five counties, including 53 in Will County.
There were 35 drug overdose deaths in Kankakee County from Dec. 1, 2015, to Nov. 30, 2016. The prior year, there were 26.
According to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, opioids contributed to about 1,200 overdose deaths in Illinois in 2016. The department reported that more Illinoisans died from an opioid-related drug overdose (because of heroin and prescription opioid pain relievers) in 2014 than from homicide or motor vehicle accidents.
Illinois is one of 14 states that has seen an 8.3 percent increase in overdose deaths.
Ironically, also on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control announced that the American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016.
A 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses was a big reason, according to the agency.
The U.S has not seen two consecutive years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused a spike of deaths those two years. In 1993, there was a one-year drop during the worst of the AIDS epidemic.
In the individual complaints filed in Illinois Supreme Court, the five counties seek 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 drug companies' deceptive marketing campaign.
In addition to monetary damages, the counties are seeking to enjoin the defendants and prohibit them from their continued unfair and deceptive acts and practices.
The defendants in the lawsuits are: 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.
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City sues drug makers for opioid crisis 'ravaging Lafayette'
Dec 22, 2017 | Journal & Courier (IN)
By Dave Bangert
Lafayette has joined a number of other cities across the country by suing pharmaceutical companies and distributors, claiming they helped create an opioid addiction crisis causing havoc in the community.
The lawsuit, filed Nov. 29 in U.S. District Court, claims “opioid addiction is ravaging Lafayette” and causing “overwhelming financial burden” on the city.
The suit claims blame belongs to 10 manufacturers for deceptively marketing the appropriate use, risks and safety of pain-relieving opioids. The suit also names three distributors for failing to report and stop suspicious orders of opioids that found their way into Lafayette.
The lawsuit, along with similar ones filed by 61 other communities across the United States, was transferred to U.S. District Court’s for Northern Ohio because the claims and the accused overlapped. Indianapolis, Hammond and Scott County – home of Indiana’s first needle exchange and an ongoing HIV and hepatitis C epidemic – are among the communities in Indiana that have filed similar lawsuits.
“I did not take the decision to enter into this lawsuit lightly,” Mayor Tony Roswarski said. “But the reality is this national crisis is draining community’s resources to educate its citizens, treat those who are facing this difficult addiction, and have sufficient law enforcement resources to stop the distribution and selling of opioids, and to arrest those who profit and are willing to help destroy the lives of our citizens. The companies that had a role in creating this crisis must bear their share of the responsibility to stop it.”
As lawsuits have mounted, companies accused have denied the claims.
In Lafayette’s suit, the city claims the emergency rooms at Franciscan Health and Indiana University Arnett Hospital treated 130 patients for drug overdoses in the first 113 days of 2016, amounting to more than one overdose a day. The suit also cites that the number of emergency room visits for non-fatal opioid overdoses increased 75 percent from 2011 to 2015 in Tippecanoe County.
The city’s suit also points to a dramatic increase in the number of accidental drug overdose deaths. From 1994 to 2003, that number was 39. In the following decade, from 2004 to 2013, the number was 149.
The manufacturers named in the suit include: Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Noramco, Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt PLC, Allergan PLC, and Watson Pharmaceuticals
The distributors named were: AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., and McKesson Corporation.
Read the lawsuit: https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4335679/Lafayette-lawsuit-against-pharmaceutical-companies.pdf
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Add Elwood, Alexandria to those suing over opioids
Dec 26, 2017 | The Herald Bulletin (IN)
By Ken de la Bastide
The cities of Elwood and Alexandria are joining a list that includes Madison County and other cities in Indiana in pursuing legal action against the drug companies and distributors for their role in causing the opioid crisis.
As is the case with the county, Elwood and Alexandria are hiring the Indianapolis law firm of Cohen & Malad to file a lawsuit in federal court in Indianapolis.
The prescription rate for opioid drugs in the county has been as high as 155 prescriptions for each 100 residents.
The Indiana Next Level Recovery website lists the state average for opioid prescriptions for each 100 residents at 84, The overall national average, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, is 82.5 prescriptions for each 100 residents.
The state numbers for Madison County show in 2008 there were 149 opioid prescriptions for each 100 residents and in 2016 that number was 110.
“These companies must be held accountable for their role in the rise of opioid addiction,” Elwood Mayor Todd Jones said. “Opioid addictions are not only putting a significant strain on public safety budgets but are more importantly destroying families.
“It is time for companies that started this and turned a blind eye to its consequences to take responsibility for the devastation it has caused in communities,” he said.
Lynn Toops of Cohen & Malad said Elwood has experienced a significant burden of the safety and well-being of residents.
“This lawsuit will seek to lessen the financial burden on the city and serve to hold these drug manufacturers and distributors accountable for their actions,” she said.
Alexandria Mayor Ron Richardson, who served two terms as Madison County Sheriff and was a member of the Drug Task Force, said he has witnessed the negative effects that drug use and addiction can bring to families.
“In our communities we must be proactive in every aspect possible when addressing these unfortunate situations in our communities,” Richardson said.
Madison County Commissioner John Richwine said Cohen & Malad are assuming all of the costs of the lawsuit, including the collection of data to support the county’s case against the drug companies.
Toops said the lawsuit will allege that the distributors failed in their duty to report and stop suspicious orders of opioids that flooded Elwood and Alexandria.
County attorney Jeff Graham said similar opioid litigation lawsuits have been filed across the country, including by Indianapolis, Bloomington and several Indiana counties.
“This mirrors the lawsuit filed by Indianapolis,” Graham said.
The Indianapolis lawsuit contends that the "dramatic increase" in painkiller use in Indianapolis was caused by the companies' deceptive marketing and their "failure to identify, report and stop suspicious orders" of opioids, the Associated Press reported in November. It also alleges the companies misled consumers and medical providers about the risks of painkillers.
Because of the high risk of addiction to opioids such as OxyContin, they should be used only for short-term needs after surgery or trauma and end-of-life care, the suit says, arguing that the companies did not market them as such and thereby created a false sense of safety for the products.
Purdue Pharma, Teva, Janssen, Endo, Allergan, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health are among the named defendants in the lawsuit.
Several of the drug companies have denied any wrong doing.
The lawsuit is seeking treble damages to cover the cost of treatment programs, care for infants born with opioid addictions and law enforcement costs.
“The complaint is that deceptive practices led to the opioid addiction problem which is costing the county,” Graham said.
The lawsuit claims that with with prolonged use, the effectiveness of opioids wanes, which requires an increase in dosage, "increasing the risk of significant side effects and addiction.” It says maufacturers knew of studies that suggested opioids should be limited to short-term use.
“To date, there have been no long-term studies demonstrating the safety and efficacy of opioids for long-term use,” the lawsuit continues.
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Hammond opioid lawsuit joins dozens of similar cases before Ohio federal judge
Dec 23, 2017 | The Northwest Indiana Times
By Steve Garrison
A lawsuit by the city of Hammond targeting opioid distributors and manufacturers has been consolidated with dozens of other similar lawsuits in a federal court in Ohio.
The local lawsuit, filed Nov. 16 in the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana, was transferred Dec. 5 to the U.S. District Court of Northern Ohio.
It is joined there by 114 similar lawsuits that claim opioid distributors and manufacturers contributed to the current opioid epidemic crisis, either through the deceptive and aggressive marketing of opioid medications, or through a failure to identify, report and stop suspicious orders for these medications.
The transfer order was made by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which is a special body within the federal court system that determines whether similar civil actions pending in different federal districts should be transferred to a single federal district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.
Cases are transferred back to their original federal districts for trial.
The transferred lawsuits originated in 20 states, and were filed by various cities, counties, hospitals and unions, among other entities. Forty-eight of the lawsuits, or 41 percent, were initiated by counties in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Wisconsin.
Lawsuits filed by the cities of LaFayette and Indianapolis, as well as a lawsuit filed by Scott County, also were transferred to Ohio's district court.
The lawsuits were transferred to the Ohio district court because of its geographic centrality, and because the state has "experienced a significant rise in the number of opioid-related overdoses in the past several years and expended significant sums in dealing with the effects of the opioid epidemic,” the judicial panel's order states.
Judge Dan A. Polster will preside over the cases.
The law firm of Cohen & Malad LLP in Indianapolis is representing Hammond in the lawsuit. The firm did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
The Lake County Board of Commissioners signed an agreement last week with Cohen & Malad LLP to file a similar lawsuit on the county's behalf.
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It’s Sedgwick County vs. Big Pharma in multimillion-dollar painkiller lawsuit
Dec 22, 2017 | The Wichita Eagle (KS)
By Dion Lefler
Seeking to recoup millions of dollars of public costs of opioid addiction, Sedgwick County sued some of the nation’s biggest drug companies Thursday, accusing them of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering on prescription painkillers such as Lortab, OxyContin and fentanyl.
The lawsuit targets manufacturers and distributors of a wide menu of drugs, all of which are derived from opium poppies, the same active ingredient in street heroin.
According to a database run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were as many prescriptions written for opioid drugs in Sedgwick County in 2016 as there are people living here, the lawsuit alleges.
“The CDC’s statistics prove that the opioid prescription rates in Sedgwick County have exceeded any legitimate medical, scientific, or industrial purpose,” the lawsuit said.
That one-to-one ratio of prescriptions to people is about 33 percent higher than the national average, said Ryan Prochaska of the law firm Prochaska, Howell and Prochaska, which is representing the county in the litigation.
In some recent years, there were more opioid prescriptions written than there are people in the county, said his father and law partner, Brad Prochaska.
Obviously, not everyone in the county is taking opioid drugs, so the only plausible conclusion is that a small number of people are getting multiple prescriptions to feed their own addiction or sell to addicts, Brad Prochaska said.
And, he said the pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors have taken advantage and sold billions of dollars worth of pills that they knew or should have known were going to illicit use.
The defendants include some of the biggest manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and several subsidiaries and affiliated companies.
Johnson & Johnson is the largest on the list. Others include: Teva, Endo, Allergan, Janssen and Mallinckrodt. Some of the companies make brand-name pain killers, while others make generic versions of opioid drugs.
The lawsuit also names America’s “Big Three” drug wholesalers, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp.
In similar cases, industry executives have denied wrongdoing.
Companies involved in the Sedgwick County lawsuit have joined in an industry working group to try to address issues involved in misuse of their products and have produced educational materials for doctors and pharmacists on how to spot potential abusers.
“We believe the allegations in the lawsuits against our company are both legally and factually unfounded,” said Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, in a statement sent to The Eagle. “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.”
Teva also responded to The Eagle.
“We take a multi-faceted approach to this complex issue; we work to educate communities and healthcare providers on appropriate medicine use and prescribing, we comply closely with all relevant federal and state regulations regarding these medicines, and, through our R&D pipeline, we are developing non-opioid treatments that have the potential to bring relief to patients in chronic pain,” wrote Denise Bradley, the company’s vice president of corporate reputation.
“Teva also collaborates closely with other stakeholders, including providers and prescribers, regulators, public health officials and patient advocates, to understand how to prevent prescription drug abuse without sacrificing patients’ needed access to pain medicine,” the statement said.
But Sedgwick County’s lawsuit alleges the companies deceptively manipulated doctors at medical conferences, by hiring prominent and influential physicians to recommend opioid drugs to colleagues and to downplay the risk of addiction.
“They’ll have these doctors, called ‘key opinion leaders,’ saying how great (the drugs) are, how they can be used for any type of pain and if it’s legitimate pain, they are non-addictive,” Ryan Prochaska said.
If doctors reported signs of addiction in their patients, “They (the companies) will then say, oh, that’s pseudo-addiction. You need to give them more pills,” he said.
Attorneys general in Kansas and 40 other states are investigating opioid manufaturers and marketers.
A handful of states and dozens of local governments nationwide have already sued over opioid addiction costs. Sedgwick County’s lawsuit is expected to be combined with federal litigation in northern Ohio, the epicenter of the national opioid crisis, the lawyers said.
While larger firms will do most of the heavy legal lifting, the local attorneys will be working to quantify Sedgwick County’s costs to abate problems caused by prescription opioid abuse, the lawyers said.
There are direct costs, such as responding to overdose emergencies and providing treatment for addicted residents. And there are indirect costs, such as training and equipment for law enforcement and providing care and social services for the children of addicts, Brad Prochaska said.
“There’s all kinds of education that has to be implemented for doctors, county personnel, victims of families with addiction,” he said. “And then we also want in place certain guards so that the amount of pills distributed and what they’re distributed for is significantly reduced so we can stop the addiction.”
The county isn’t spending any money or doing any of the work on the lawsuit. The private lawyers will be paid a share of whatever the county may recover from the litigation.
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22 plaintiffs join Summit County suit against pharmaceutical companies
Dec 22, 2017 | WKSU (OH)
By Amanda Rabinowitz and Philip De Oliveria
Twenty-two towns, cities, and public agencies in Summit County are joining a lawsuit against opioid makers and distributors. Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Barberton, and the county health department are among the nearly two dozen plaintiffs teaming together in the suit. In a press conference Thursday, County Executive Eileen Shapiro said opioid addiction added $2.6 million per year to county children’s services, as part of $66 million in related costs and an estimated $150 million more over the next decade in dealing with the crisis. Shapiro did not name an amount for damages requested in the suit. . A lawyer for a Washington, D.C.-based firm hired by the county says lawsuits filed by other states have faced long delays in similar litigation.
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Questions linger in state opioid lawsuit
Dec 26, 2017 | Dickinson County News (IA)
By Seth Boyes
Rising reports of opioid addiction in the state prompted the Iowa State Association of Counties to request resolutions of support from each of Iowa's 99 about a potential lawsuit against major pharmaceutical companies.
The suit is aimed at holding pharmaceutical companies responsible for their respective roles in creating the opioid epidemic, according to the resolution. The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors discussed the resolution earlier this month and decided to gather more information on local use before signing on. Additional facts and figures were presented during Tuesday's Dickinson County Board of Supervisors meeting, but the board felt some unease surrounding the lawsuit.
Supervisor Mardi Allen estimated she has never known ISAC to do endorse a lawsuit in 15 years. Supervisor Pam Jordan questioned whether pressure from the federal level was spurring ISAC's support of the lawsuit.
"The fed has come down on Iowa," Jordan said. "We haven't done anything right from Medicaid to workforce development to — this is revenge, in my opinion."
Board Chairman Bill Leupold indicated ISAC may feel pharmaceutical companies mislead medical providers and the public as to the potential dangers of opioid use. Sarah Prange, with Compass Pointe Behavioral Health, said certain pharmaceutical companies in the late 90s or early 2000s gave the impression that using opioids to treat pain had no downside for users. However, she was unsure if this was why ISAC is seeking support for the lawsuit.
Supervisor Paul Johnson echoed Jordan and questioned whether addressing the so-called opioid epidemic through ISAC was the best course of action. The resolution states the cost of litigation would be covered by the law firm presenting the case, and the county would only be expected to cooperate and provide data. While Supervisor Tim Fairchild said he was supportive of addressing opioid addiction, he was not sure if the suit is aimed at the heart of the issue.
"It sounds good but, in reality, if you've ever been in a situation where you needed drugs like this, we're attacking the people who make them," Fairchild said. "It sounds like there's somebody else that's more responsible than the drug company … Somebody else is writing those scripts."
Parallels were drawn between the proposed suit and those filed against tobacco companies or gun manufacturers. Ultimately, the board decided to once again postpone a decision on the resolution until more information could be gathered on ISAC's motivation to join the potential lawsuit. A pair of ISAC meetings are scheduled in the next few months, and the board expects a good deal of discussion on the lawsuit will be had at the meetings, hopefully clarifying ISAC's intent.
However, the board was at least convinced opioids addiction is on the rise in Dickinson County and northwest Iowa.
Prange was tasked with collecting data on opioid addiction in northwest Iowa for Compass Pointe some time ago and found hundreds of individuals are impacted by opioids in Dickinson County — thousands statewide. She said opioid-related convictions have increased in the region, but said the data does not show whether opioids were the primary offense. She said opioid use seems to be moving from east to west, and northwest Iowa may be the last to be hit by drugs like heroine, which rely on major airports. However, she indicated the tide is rising.
"I can tell you I've seen a few heroine overdoses in the last year," Prange said. "So it's definitely here."
Prange said Compass Pointe provides community opioid training, medication-assisted treatment and other addiction related services.
"I can tell you, when we first started doing this in August, we didn't have anyone who really needed those specific services, but now we have several people," Prange said. "Now that we're providing these services, more people are admitting to that addiction and are getting the help they need."
Prange said opioid addiction often comes about unintentionally.
"People aren't really aware about why it can be addicting and why they have a month's worth of pills for getting a tooth pulled," Prange said.
Compass Pointe has been stocking pamphlets on the subject at hospitals and pharmacies in the region, according to Prange. She also said the organization has been promoting the use of a statewide prescription monitoring program, which allows prescribers to see if a patient is filling opioid prescriptions with multiple providers. Between 69 and 77 opioid prescriptions per capita are filled in Dickinson County, according to Prange's data, although the prescriptions could be from outside the state. She said any person with the ability to prescribe medication can voluntarily join the online program, but the system does not necessarily provide out-of-state data. Prange said states like Illinois and Minnesota have voluntarily partnered with Iowa's monitoring program, but states, like Nebraska for example, have not. Will said facilities like Spencer Hospital have capped certain prescriptions at a three-day supply. Prange added some providers are using new pain scales and prescribing smaller doses of opioids. Allen indicated smaller dosages may affect insurance costs for some individuals.
Locally, Dickinson County Sheriff Greg Baloun said the drug disposal box outside the county courthouse has seen between 10 and 20 pounds of drugs and medication on average each week. He said the box was completely full after he returned after Christmas.
"I would hate to have known the dollar amount that I collected the other day," Baloun said. "It'd scare you."
He said some of the medication is simply in need of being disposed after an elderly individual has passed away and noted addiction is not limited to the stereotypical college student. The sheriff partially attributed the volume to an increase in various public services announcements. Prange said anonymity is often a major factor for some, and a number of clients at Compass Pointe were formerly drug dealers. Baloun seemed to agree anonymity is important in addressing the issue.
"Someone who's turned their life around — they shouldn't be scared to come to the sheriff's office and dump it," Baloun said.
Fairchild said the root of the problem still seemed to be over-prescription.
"It just seems like the real point that has to be attacked is the people prescribing," he said. "It just seems so basic. When you feed cattle, if the bunk isn't clean, then you cut back a little next time."
Baloun did not dispute the issue's nature.
"Somewhere in the 80s, they quit giving out common sense," the sheriff said.
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Counties may join suit against opioid-makers
Dec 27, 2017 | DL-Online (MN)
By Nbowe and Shannon Geisen
Minnesota's 87 counties are considering litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors for being complicit and complacent in the opioid addiction epidemic.
Hubbard County will likely become one of them, and Becker County is keeping its options open.
How big is the opioid problem in America? Huge. The average life expectancy in the United States decreased for second year in a row last year, largely due to opioid-related overdose deaths. If overdose deaths increase again this year, it will mean declining life expectancy for three years in a row, which the United States hasn't seen since the terrible Spanish flu epidemic of 100 years ago.
Opioids and related drugs killed more than 52,000 people across the U.S. in 2015—nearly as many Americans as died in the entire Vietnam War.
Most of the deaths involved common prescription opioids such as OxyContin or Vicodin, or related drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. People with addictions often take whichever of the drugs they can get cheapest and easiest.
In recent months news reports have surfaced that appear to show pharmaceutical manufacturers knew of the addiction potential and still relentlessly marketed their products despite the dangers.
Hubbard County Attorney Jonathan Frieden shared information about the lawsuit to county commissioners at a meeting last month. The board took no immediate action.
"There has been discussion by all the county attorneys regarding the possibility to be a plaintiff in opioid litigation and taking action to hold accountable the distributors and manufacturers," he said. "The basic legal premise behind it is that Vicodin, Oxycontin — opioids — should be used for short-term, post-surgical pain. They have not been marketed or distributed for short-time pain solely. They've been marketed and distributed by certain companies for long-term chronic pain."
Like the lawsuits against big tobacco companies earlier, the lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that make synthetic opioids is an effort to recover some of the social and public costs that are rocking the nation. There is an ongoing federal lawsuit as well.
"There's a number of firms that are pursuing this..," Frieden said. "Basically, I wanted to put this on your radar that this is going on. It's pretty unanimous by county attorneys that this is a good idea. It's not going to be out-of-pocket for us. All of these firms have the same fee agreement, which is 25 percent of any recovery. They will front all of the costs for disclosure, discovery, which is not a small amount of money, obviously," Frieden said.
"What it would cost us, potentially, is if we got to the damages part and some of our employees would need to meet with attorneys and articulate where our damages are as a county," he added. "That's going to be Social Services and our treatment costs and out-of-home placement costs for kids because parents are addicted to opioids. It's going to be the county sheriff and costs to incarcerate individuals who are addicted."
Becker County Attorney Tammy Merkins also recently briefed the Becker County Board on the issue.
"There are some counties in the metro area that have sued manufacturers of these pharmaceuticals, seeking reimbursement for what counties and cities have spent," she said.
Commissioners were interested in keeping the county's options open, but also concerned about how much staff time would be required to document individual cases. That's the issue," said Commissioner Barry Nelson, "trying to pinpoint what the damages are—we'd have to track certain cases back to specific defendants and show that prescription opioids are to blame and not some other drug..."
"Can you imagine the litigation costs that are going to be involved?" added Commissioner Larry Knutson. "Because there's going to be a pushback (from pharmaceutical companies) of course."
The opioid litigation is expected "to take a very long time," Merkins said. "This is just an update." She contacted neighboring counties to see if the county attorneys were interested in a pursuing a group approach to the litigation, but "we're all sitting on the same fence," she said.
Commissioner Ben Grimsley said he is not interested in seeing the county pursue such a lawsuit. Knutson said he agreed for now, "but things could change," he said.
Nelson said that at some point the board would like to see a recommendation from Merkins as to whether or not the county should pursue the litigation.
Becker County is going to want to have a stake in any eventual settlement, Nelson said, if it can be done with minimal staff time. "It could be like the tobacco lawsuit," he said. "Drug companies hid how addictive opioids are—the idea is to discourage that kind of irresponsible behavior by drug companies."
If Minnesota counties do receive a settlement, the money could be used for drug treatment centers, if all the counties agreed, or simply distributed to the counties, Frieden said.
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Opioid crisis: Miller, other AR counties sue drug companies
Dec 28, 2017 | KSLA News (AR)
By Staff
An alarming statistic ranks Arkansas the second-highest state in the nation for the number of opioid prescriptions.
The County Judges Association of Arkansas says only Alabama has a higher rate.
And the association says it is time to try to recoup some of the costs of the opioid epidemic on local communities and counties.
So Miller County leaders have joined their counterparts in other Arkansas counties in a class-action lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies to combat drug addiction.
“This has to stop. And one of the thing that is going to stop it is this lawsuit,” Miller County Judge Roy McNatt said.
The main focus of the lawsuit is heroin and other opioid-related drugs, he said.
“And we think we are being oversedated over the use of them and then you are getting addicted to it.”
Miller County Correctional Center is like other county jails in Arkansas with a large population of inmates with addictions to prescribed and illicit drugs.
“When these offenders are booked into our facility because of the direct correlation of narcotics abuse,” Miller County sheriff's Capt. Mark Lewis said.
Jail officials say such inmates now have to receive special treatment at a cost to the county.
“It requires increase manpower, increases surveillance. We have to monitor and segregate those individuals so there is an increased cost in detention facilities,” Lewis said.
The Association of Arkansas Counties has formed a task force to combat the epidemic with the goals of creating an educational program to increase public awareness of the dangers of opioids.
McNatt said officials not only hope the lawsuit will help counties financially but will assist those with an addiction to help overcome the habit.
“We want to try and stop this as much as we can, start lowering these people down out of jail back into the work force back as productive citizens. That is going to be a great thing if we get this done,” the judge said.
McNatt noted that joining the lawsuit is not costing Miller County taxpayers any money.
So far this year, more than 1,000 people have died from opioid overdoses in Arkansas.
Arkansas ranks the top 20 percent in the nation.
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Delray sues Fortune 500 opioid makers for ‘worst drug scourge ever’
Dec 22, 2017 | Palm Beach Post (FL)
By Lulu Ramadan
Delray Beach filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against some of the largest drug-makers and distributors in the country, holding them responsible, in part, for an opioid epidemic that has cost local taxpayers millions of dollars.
The city spent about $3 million responding to more than 700 opioid calls last year alone, the lawsuit claims. Every overdose costs the city about $2,000 in manpower and lifesaving material.
Delray also took a financial hit hiring mental health workers, paying employees overtime, buying and repairing equipment for first responders and equipping responders with an expensive but necessary supply of the overdose antidote drug naloxone.
“Cities, like ours, face immeasurable human tragedies and escalating, multi-million dollar fiscal impacts due, in part, to the negligence and fraud of opioid manufacturers and distributors who reaped billions while knowingly, if not intentionally, spawning the current and next generation of opioid addicts,” Mayor Cary Glickstein said in a statement.
Delray Beach is suing for costs, losses and damages for injuries sustained by the city.
The lawsuit targets some of the largest drug-makers and distributors in the country, including McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — among the top 15 companies in the Fortune 500.
The lawsuit also names as defendants Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo International, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Insys and Mallinckrodt.
Drug manufacturers “engaged in a concerted, coordinated strategy” to shift the way doctors and patients think about pain management in order to maximize profits and bolster a multi-billion dollar industry, the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit claims these manufacturers borrowed from “the tobacco industry’s playbook” by using disingenuous marketing. The lawsuit itself seems to borrow from the Big Tobacco era, when government entities, Florida included, successfully sued tobacco companies for falsely marketing their products leading to widespread illness.
“We look forward to our day in court to redress the financial damages our taxpayers have been forced to shoulder,” Glickstein said.
These drug-manufacturers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Delray Beach physicians to market oxycodone, a highly addictive generic painkiller and the nation’s best-selling drug, the lawsuit states.
Purdue, for example, paid $23,000 to Delray Beach doctors for speaking gigs, consulting and other services between 2013 and 2016, the complaint reports based on publicly available data. Janssen paid Delray doctors more than $77,000, while Mallinckrodt paid them more than $110,400, according to the lawsuit.
The pharmaceutical companies understated the addictive nature of oxycodone, the lawsuit says.
And Delray Beach, widely known as the recovery capital of the country, has borne the brunt of the ensuing epidemic.
Delray Beach claims these drug-makers violated state’s deceptive and unfair trade practices act; public nuisance, negligence and unjust enrichment laws; and violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO and patterned after the federal law originally aimed at mobsters so law enforcement can crack down on organized crime groups.
The lawsuit demands a jury trial. It isn’t clear how long the lawsuit will last.
Other cities, such as Chicago, Ill. and Dayton, Oh., have filed similar ongoing lawsuits, but Delray Beach is the first in Florida.
The city is represented by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a national law group with an office in Boca Raton.
The law firm anticipates other governing bodies will join as plaintiffs.
“Our firm is committed to holding opioid manufacturers and distributors accountable for their fraudulent marketing of opioids, which has fueled the worst drug scourge ever,” said Mark J. Dearman, a partner at Robbins Geller.
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Jeff Davis considers retaining attorneys for opioid litigation
Dec 23, 2017 | American Press (LA)
By Doris Maricle
The Jeff Davis Parish Police Jury is considering a measure to participate in pending opioid crisis litigation.
Attorney John Young presented police jurors with a proposal this week that would allow the parish to retain a legal team to investigate and seek litigation against the manufactures of prescription opioids. The litigation is being pursued on a contingency basis and will not cost the parish anything, he said.
The Police Jury will consider the action at its Dec. 27 meeting.
“Opioid abuse is a crisis and needs to be addressed,” Young told police jurors.
Even though the state is pursing the cases, Young said each parish needs to have its own representation.
Attorneys have already been retained by several parishes and municipalities in the state including Bossier Parish, Young said. Negotiations are underway with other parishes, he said.
Since 1999 the number of opioid overdoses have quadrupled making it one of the top five health threats in the U.S., Young said.
“Opioid abuse and addiction is a problem,” Young said, noting that one in four people prescribed opioids get addicted.
The problem preys on the elderly, veterans and heroin users, he said.
“Four out of five new heroin users in the U.S. started out using opioids,” he said.
Young said the litigation is targeting manufacturers and distributors for fraudulent marketing campaigns that downplay the risks of addiction.
He said the costs of opioid prescriptions in the U.S. is higher than anywhere else with the drug manufacturers profiting from the sales without the adverse problems many local governing authorities are facing with higher health care and criminal court costs, he said.
In Louisiana, opioid abuse cost the state $296 million a year in health care cost alone, he said.
The litigation seeks to recover some of the damages caused by the opioid problems and will establish a special fund to help set up treatment for those addicted to opioids.
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Nashville sues opioid manufacturers to recoup costs of fighting epidemic
Dec 23, 2017 | Tennessean
By Joey Garrison
Metro government filed suit late Friday against multiple manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids, making Nashville the latest local municipality in Tennessee to turn to court to try to recover public dollars spent in the national opioid epidemic.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, had been expected after the Metro Council on Tuesday finalized approval of a contract with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, a law firm that will litigate the case for Metro.
The same law firm, which has an office in Nashville, filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of Smith County earlier in the week.
The Nashville lawsuit comes just five months after the 22-year-old son of Mayor Megan Barry, Max Barry, died in July from a drug overdose that included multiple opioids. The mayor's office has said the administration was considering the legal action before Max's death.
The suit alleges the opioid companies "systematically and repeatedly disregarded the safety of their customers and the public” through misleading promotion and over-supplying of opioids. Under the law, these companies are supposed to monitor and report dangerous behavior, but Metro has argued they failed to do so in favor of maximizing profits.
It also claims that marketing schemes — not a medical breakthrough — led to an increase in opioids being prescribed for chronic pain. Metro has accused the defendants of downplaying the risk of addiction to opioids, promoting the idea that signs of addiction should be treated with more addiction, and exaggerating the effectiveness of screening tools to prevent addiction, among other claims.
"Cities like Nashville and their taxpayers have borne the cost of the opioid epidemic for far too long while the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, consisting of manufacturers and distributors, has reaped astronomical profits," said attorney Kenny Byrd, a partner at Lieff Cabraser. "It can't be business as usual anymore and those industries need to be held accountable for the millions of dollars of taxpayer money that goes to treat the epidemic."
Barry was unavailable for comment.
The Tennessean was unable reach defendants for comment.
The lawsuit is expected to be transferred to the U.S. District Court of Northern Ohio., where hundreds of similar cases have been sent.
Opioids kill 100 Americans daily, according to plaintiffs, costing nearly $80 billion per year in lost productivity.
Metro Council attorney Mike Jameson, in a legal analysis before Metro tapped outside legal counsel, said the "economic impacts" of opioid addiction on Metro government includes drug addiction treatment, emergency room visits, law enforcement response, incarceration, child abuse and neglect, and the cost for removing children from parental custody, as well as medical treatment for prenatal opioid exposure.
Barry was unavailable to comment on the city's lawsuit.
Defendants in Metro's lawsuit include: Purdue Pharma, Cephalon Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Noramco, Endo Health Solutions, Mallinckrodt Plc, Allergan PLC, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Watson Laboratories, Actavis LLC, Insys Therapeutics, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., and McKesson Corporation.
“Our city has been devastated by opioid addiction and all its related harms,” attorney Mark Chalos, a partner at Lieff Cabraser, said. “What we have seen in Nashville and throughout our region, is millions of pills being sold in communities where there aren’t millions of people.
"It is time the opioid manufacturers and distributors are held accountable for their wrongful conduct that has destroyed families and cost untold millions of taxpayer dollars in Nashville, across Tennessee, and throughout the U.S.”
The city's agreement with Lieff Cabraser had been held up in the council for the past month amid a dispute with council members over whether the Barry administration actively recruited minority-led law firms for the bid. Participation of minority-owned companies in Metro business has lagged.
Easing some of the pushback, Metro has now tapped Manson Johnson Conner PLLC, one of the city's largest African-American-led laws firms, to serve as co-counsel.
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Metro files lawsuit against prescription opioid manufacturers
Dec 23, 2017 | WSMV.com (TN)
By Edward Burch
Each day, more than 100 Americans are killed by opioids.
Now, Nashville’s Metro government and Davidson County have filed a lawsuit against the distributors and manufacturers of prescription opioid drugs.
Mark Chalos is the managing partner of the firm representing Metro Nashville and Davidson County.
He says the purpose of this lawsuit is to recover taxpayer money and resources spent to combat the opioid epidemic in the Nashville community.
“There is no family in our community that is untouched by the opioid catastrophe,” said Chalos. “This seeks to hold the wrongdoers accountable and to make sure the wrongdoers pay those costs rather than the taxpayers of Nashville.”
The lawsuit is filed against a number of large opioid manufacturers and distributors. The complaint alleges that the defendants disregarded the safety of their customers and the public through misleading promotion and over-supplying of opioids.
“The opioid manufacturers and distributors all played a role in creating and fostering the opioid catastrophe,” said Chalos.
The complaint also alleges that marketing schemes rationalized prescribing opioids for chronic pain and opened the floodgates for opioid use and abuse. He adds that manufacturers and distributors downplayed the serious risk of addiction.
“They convinced the public, they convinced the medical community, in many cases falsely, that these drugs were necessary, that these drugs were safe, and little to no risk of addiction,” Chalos explained.
Chalos says the defendants are responsible for a crisis with overwhelming financial, social, and deadly consequences.
“These lawsuits are not like any other lawsuit that's ever been filed,” he explained. “Nashville, I expect will be a leader in this litigation, and I expect Nashville is leading as an example for other cities, counties, fighting for its citizens.”
Smith County is also filing a federal lawsuit against prescription opioid manufacturers and distributors.
If you know someone who struggles with addiction, click here for ways to find treatment help.
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SHERIFF EDDIE SOILEAU SUES DRUG COMPANIES OVER OPIOID EPIDEMIC
Dec 27, 2017 | Ville Platte Today (LA)
By Elizabeth West
On December 15, 2017, a lawsuit naming Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau as the plaintiff was filed against several pharmaceutical companies for false advertising as it relates to opioids.
In the suit, filed by David C. Laborde with Laborde Earles Law Firm, LLC, it alleges that “in order to expand the market for opioids and realize blockbuster profits, defendants sought to create a false perception of the safety and efficacy of opioids in the minds of medical professionals and members of the public that would encourage the use of opioids for longer periods of time and to treat a wider range of problems.”
According to the suit, the “defendants successfully created that false perception through a coordinated, sophisticated and highly deceptive marketing campaign that began in the late 1990s, became more aggressive in or about 2006, and continues to the present.”
What the suit calls the pharmaceutical’s “aggressive marketing,” the sheriff and his attorney feel have contributed to the rise in opioid use, addiction and overdose.
In the lawsuit it states that “opioid addiction and overdose have reached epidemic levels over the past decade,” and since March of 2016 has been recognized by the FDA as a “public health crisis.”
In the sheriff’s suit, it alleges that due to the defendants’ wrongful conduct, “plaintiff has been required to spend significant sums that would not have other wise been spent in its efforts to combat the public nuisance created by defendants’ deceptive marketing campaign.”
The suit goes on to state that the “plaintiff has incurred and continues to incur costs related to opioid addiction and abuse, including, but not limited to health care costs, injured employee medical benefits, criminal justice and victimization costs, and lost productivity costs.”
Sheriff Soileau has now become one of several Louisiana Sheriffs to file a lawsuit against the following pharmaceutical companies and doctors: Purdue Pharma L.P.; Purdue Pharma, Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company, 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. Randall Brewer; Dr. Perry Fine; Dr. Scott Fishman and Dr. Lynn Webster .
Other sheriffs to file lawsuits are from Rapides, Avoyelles, Lafayette, Jefferson Davis, Washington, Calcasieu, Ouachita, Sabine and Vernon Parishes.
According to the lawsuits, state data show that opioid-related deaths in Louisiana have nearly doubled from 155 in 2012 to 305 in 2016.
The lawsuit also sheds light on the fact that “Louisiana is one of eight states that has more opioid prescriptions than it has residents.”
As it relates to Evangeline Parish, the lawsuit states that “in 2015, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), Evangeline Parish had one of the highest concentrations of opioid prescriptions per person in the state and was well over the national average.”
According to the lawsuit, the “prescription rate in Evangeline Parish was over 959 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) per person nationally.”
The addiction to these controlled substances, according to the lawsuit, are felt to lead to the “commission of criminal acts to obtain opioids.”
The sheriff, according to the lawsuit, believes that “a significant number of the inmates or detainees under plaintiff’s control and supervision are opioid abusers, resulting in increased medical costs borne by plaintiff directly attributable to defendants’ fraudulent marketing and subsequent proliferation of opioid pain medication.”
In this matter, the sheriff, according to the lawsuit, “seeks a judgment requiring all defendants to pay restitution, damages, including multipliers of damages, disgorgement, civil penalties, attorney’s fees, costs and expenses, injunctive relief, and any other relief to which plaintiff may be entitled.” -
City, county join class-action opioid suit with trial lawyers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Neshoba Democrat (MS)
By Staff
Philadelphia and Neshoba County are joining a nationwide class-action lawsuit against distributors of opioids in wake of what officials describe as a costly pandemic of abuse.
The Board of Supervisors has hired Attorney Levin Papantonio, whose firm is based out of Pensacola, Fla., along with Attorney Wade White of Philadelphia.
The Mayor and Board of Aldermen has hired the Jackson-based Bossier law firm, partnering with Mars, Mars and Mars of Philadelphia.
The litigation comes at no cost to Philadelphia and Neshoba County, attorneys said.
Distributors of opioid medications could be vulnerable to damage claims through the litigation to treat those who are addicted as well as to fund related emergency room and law enforcement expenses among others, officials said.
In Neshoba County alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that there were 147.1 opioid prescriptions written for every 100 people during 2016.
White said it had become apparent to supervisors through the jail population, Department of Human Services matters and hospital populations that the distributors have flooded the area with opioids, which are prescription-type drugs such as morphine, hydrocodone and oxycodone.
The county began working with the Eighth District’s Drug Court in August, hoping to utilize its database to show the impact the over exposure of opioids is having on Neshoba County, White said.
“We have talked to Leake and Newton counties, who are in our Drug Court District, so that we can all go together and use the same firm,” he said, noting that Papantonio is the lead counsel in the nationwide litigation.
Mayor James A. Young strongly supports the litigation.
“This is, hopefully, a way to rectify and maybe recoup some financial losses,” he said, noting the number of addiction-related crimes the city has seen over the past year.
“I think it sends a message that this is not a minor issue but a major issue that has to be addressed in every form that we can address it,” Young said. “Hopefully, this will help get some funds back in for education and other things that will create a better atmosphere for our people.”
The growing impact of opioids in Neshoba County and other communities was discussed at a town hall meeting here earlier this month where an officer with the state Bureau of Narcotics told about 75 people in attendance that the nation was “on the brink of a super pandemic.”
Lt. Jon Harless of MBN said a super pandemic may sound like overkill to some people, but pointed out that Mad Cow disease and Asian Flu were at one time described as a pandemic.
It costs $78.5 billion to treat and provide healthcare and/or incarcerate people nationwide who are addicted to opioids, he said.
Last year alone, 45,087 opioid prescriptions were written in Neshoba County where the total population is 29,403.
In many cases, opioid prescriptions are the doorway to addiction, Harless said. -
Mobile Files Lawsuit Against Drug Companies
Dec 28, 2017 | WKRG News (AL)
By Katarina Luketich
The City of Mobile filed a public nuisance lawsuit against some of the largest manufacturers of prescription opioids and their related companies as well as wholesale drug distributors.
The manufacturers listed as defendants are Purdue Pharma L.C., Cephalon, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endo Health Solutions, Inc., Allergan PLC, and Mallinckrdot, LLC. The distributors listed in the lawsuit are McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., and Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation.
The lawsuit alleges the manufacturing companies pushed highly addictive opioids and falsely presented to doctors that patients would only rarely succumb to drug addiction. The lawsuit alleges distributors failed to monitor, detect, investigate, and report suspicious orders of prescription opioids.
“Homes have been broken and families torn apart by this epidemic, which has claimed victims from all walks of life,” said Mayor Stimpson. “The pharmaceutical drug manufacturers and wholesale drug distributors failed in their legal obligation to notify the Drug Enforcement Administration of suspicious orders, even as the number of pills flowing into our city rose and rose.”
The City of Mobile says citizens are bearing the burden of the cost of the opioid epidemic including the costs of treatment for addiction as well as the increased need for law enforcement in relation to the opioid epidemic.
Read the whole lawsuit here. (https://mgtvwkrg.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/001-complaint-city-of-mobile.pdf)
If you suspect a doctor of overprescribing medication, you can file a complaint with the Alabama Medical Licensure Commission.
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Nashua Becomes Second N.H. City to Take Opioid Companies to Court
Dec 22, 2017 | NHPR
By Casey McDermott
Nashua is now the second New Hampshire city to sue pharmaceutical giants over their alleged role fueling the community’s opioid crisis. The city’s complaint is almost identical to one filed on behalf of the city of Manchester in September.
Both were filed with the help of the same New York-based law firm, Napoli Shkolnik, and both go after the same set of drug companies. Both also claim those companies’ ignored the risks their products posed to patients and engaged in misleading marketing practices that, ultimately, gave rise to the opioid problems the cities are facing today.
“As a direct and foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ wrongful conduct, [Nashua] has been required to spend millions of dollars each year in its efforts to combat the public nuisance created by Defendants’ deceptive marketing campaign,” the complaint states. “Plaintiff has incurred and continues to incur costs related to opioid addiction and abuse, including, but not limited to, health care costs, criminal justice and victimization costs, social costs, and lost productivity costs. Defendants’ misrepresentations regarding the safety and efficacy of long-term opioid use proximately caused injury to Plaintiff and its residents.”
Joseph Ciaccio, an attorney with Napoli Shkolnik who is involved in both cases, said the goal of the Nashua lawsuit is also the same as Manchester's: to compensate the city both for the damage already done by opioids as well as for future cleanup it will need to keep doing in the years to come.
“As much as it’s about what they’ve already spent, a lot of it has to do also with what the city’s going to need to try to slow and eventually stop what’s happening,” Ciaccio said.
The city of Manchester’s lawsuit, meanwhile, has been transferred to a court in Ohio for review alongside more than 60 other similar cases filed by communities across the country. Ciaccio said he expects Nashua’s suit will eventually get consolidated with those other cases, as well.
Ciaccio said his firm is also in talks with other New Hampshire communities about filing their own lawsuits, but those conversations are still preliminary.
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Putnam joins county opioid suit
Dec 26, 2017 | Mid-Hudson News (NY)
By Staff
Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell signed the resolution for the county to join the multi-county lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and distributors for alleged fraudulent and negligent practices regarding opioid sales and uses.
The county legislature previous approved legislation to join the lawsuit that also includes other Hudson Valley counties.
Odell said heroin and opioid use is a “major public health and safety crisis and the cost to our community is not limited to pain and suffering of the individuals and families impacted.” She said there is also a taxpayer impact including “massive resources used in county public health, law enforcement, court system, mental health and social services, coroner and medical examiner and many other programs and services.”
She said the county has “significant damages and we will aggressively pursue those damages through litigation.”
In the past three years, over 40 opioid overdoses were reported in Putnam County and drug-related arrests have increased from 339 in 2016 to 456 so far in 2017, according to the district attorney’s office.
“This crisis is only growing and as government officials, we need to do all we can to combat the violence and unnecessary death attributed to this crisis.”
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Wyoming County to sue drug manufacturers
Dec 27, 2017 | The Citizens' Voice (PA)
By C.J. Marshall
Wyoming County Commissioners on Tuesday voted to join a lawsuit being filed by other counties throughout Pennsylvania against five drug manufacturers and three wholesale drug distributors for their part in the opioid epidemic.
The county is entering into a lawsuit against drug manufacturers Perdue Pharma; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and its subsidiary Cephalon; Johnson and Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals; Endo Health Solutions; and Allergan, Activis and Watson Pharmaceuticals. The wholesale drug distributors named in the lawsuit include McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergan Drug.
The lawsuit contends that the manufacturing companies “pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, falsely representing to doctors that their patients would only rarely succumb to drug addiction, while the distributors breached their legal duties to monitor, detect, investigate, refuse and report suspicious orders of prescription opioids.”
In September, both Luzerne and Lackawanna counties announced plans to sue pharmaceutical companies, citing similar reasoning. Wyoming County has also struggled with the impact of the growing crisis.
“We are taking this action today because the costs of this opioid crisis have overwhelmed our ability to provide for health and safety of our residents,” Commissioner Tom Henry said. “Homes have been broken and families torn apart by this epidemic, which has claimed victims from all walks of life.”
The county has hired several law firms to represent the county in the case. If the case is found in favor of the plaintiffs, the law firms will receive 30 percent of the money awarded. If the case goes in favor of the defendants, the county will pay nothing for the legal representation in the case.
Commissioner Ron Williams said that the county missed out on a settlement other counties received from tobacco companies several years ago.
Now, they have an opportunity to receive a settlement from the drug companies.
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The opioid crisis will become even more deadly (EDITORIAL)
Jan 2, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
As bad as it is, the U.S. drug crisis is almost certain to get worse before it gets better.
This year ended with a grim announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Drug overdose deaths had soared 21 percent, to 63,632, in 2016 (official statistics lag by a year). That’s about equal to the population of Portland, Maine.
Opioids killed more than 42,000 people, a 28 percent increase from 2015.
The drug death toll is so high that it is now primarily responsible for the second straight year of decline in overall U.S. life expectancy — a trend basically unheard of in the developed world.
Brace for worse news in 2018. Bob Anderson, who studies mortality statistics for the CDC, said the data through May 2017 is “at least as bad” as the 2016 numbers.
People are still being killed by overdoses of pills and heroin, and in increasing numbers. But the problem now is clearly fentanyl, an illegal synthetic opioid that is smuggled from China and mixed with heroin — creating a stronger high and a greater likelihood of death. Fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids killed 19,413 people in 2016, more than double the number in the previous year. That’s an incredible leap in just 12 months. (Because many users die with more than one drug in their bodies, a single death can be attributed to two or more drugs.)So what are we doing about this? Not enough, according to most authorities. The number of prescriptions for opioids is down a bit in recent years, and some doctors are trying to give each patient fewer pills. That might help patients avoid dependence and keep unused extras off the street. Meanwhile, stopping fentanyl and heroin from entering the country has proved difficult. And although President Trump has declared the drug crisis a national emergency, the government has devoted little money to making treatment more available.
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Critical Mass: A 'Dream Team' Aims to Lead Opioid MDL
Dec 22, 2017 | Law.com
By Amanda Bronstad
)Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com’s new briefing on class actions and mass torts. I’m Amanda Bronstad in Los Angeles. As the year draws to an end, opioid litigation revs up: On Wednesday, a proposed plaintiffs attorney team that looks like a “Who’s Who” of the mass torts bar has moved to spearhead the federal multidistrict litigation – but not without some pushback. Lawyers in the NFL concussion case want to depose the expert who recommended caps on attorney fees in the landmark litigation. And the American Association for Justice came out with a first-time report of the worst corporate conduct of 2017 (think Wells Fargo, Equifax, Fox News and pretty much all of Wall Street.) And do you still have some gifts to buy this holiday season? Check out this list of gifts that might be just a bit too, well, dangerous.
A Dream Team for Opioids MDL
More than 20 plaintiffs lawyers filed a motion on Wednesday to lead the federal multidistrict litigation over opioids – and the names would make anyone’s “best and brightest” list.
The proposed co-leads are Paul Hanly of Simmons Hanly Conroy, Joe Riceof Motley Rice and Paul Farrell of West Virginia’s Greene, Ketchum, Farrell, Bailey & Tweel, aided by an executive committee made up of some pretty prominent lawyers in the mass torts bar: Burton LeBlanc, Russell Budd, Elizabeth Cabraser, Christopher Seeger, Ellen Relkin, Mark Lanier, and so on and so forth…
Here’s my story on the motion. (https://www.law.com/sites/nationallawjournal/2017/12/20/mass-torts-bar-all-star-team-is-tapped-to-lead-opioid-mdl/?et=&bu=&cn=&src=&pt=
But even a Dream Team has some detractors. On Thursday, three motions (see here, here and here) were filed opposing the proposed slate – or at least, who it left out.
1st here: http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/398/Critical-Mass-Opioid-Morgan-Morgan-response.pdf?et=&bu=&cn=&src=&pt=
2nd here: http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/398/Critical-Mass-Opioid-Dugan-response.pdf?et=&bu=&cn=&src=&pt=
3rd here: http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/398/Critical-Mass-Opioid-Frazer-response.pdf?et=&bu=&cn=&src=&pt=
Apparently, a voice vote for unanimous consent that took place at a Monday meeting at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel wasn’t all that unanimous. Tampa attorney John Yanchunis called it a “scripted performance” that “smacks of unfairness.”
“The ‘process’ used by this small group of counsel to self-select themselves and a group of others for various leadership positions in this multidistrict litigation was anything but open, transparent or fair,” wrote Yanchunis, of Morgan & Morgan, which represents several West Virginia counties and the state of Kentucky in opioid cases.
Two other lawyers, T. Roe Frazer of Frazer PLC in Nashville and J. Nixon Daniel of Pensacola’s Beggs & Lane, asked that a seat be added to the executive committee for a lawyer representing hospitals. And nine law firms — including Cleveland’s Climaco, Wilcox, Peca & Garofoli; San Diego’s Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah; and Philadelphia’s Fine, Kaplan & Black – suggested a separate plaintiffs steering committee for third-party payors like health care insurers and union pension funds.
One key role to watch: Whoever ends up as liaison counsel to the state courts, where many lawyers have preferred to pursue opioid cases. Jay Edelson, of Edelson PC, who is leading a team of lawyers planning to file opioid suits in state courts told me “we like the proposed MDL leadership team and we will certainly look for ways to make sure that our respective efforts are acting in collaboration.” NFL Lawyers Want Instant Replay
Last week, Harvard Law School professor William Rubenstein recommended that lead plaintiffs firms in the $1 billion NFL concussion settlement have their attorney fees capped at 15%. So, no surprise, lawyers from five firms filed motions this week wanting to depose him.
Here’s Law.com’s Max Mitchell with the update.
Max’s story says the motions ask U.S. District Judge Anita Brody to reconsider her order earlier this month barring depositions of Rubenstein, who was asked to review class counsel’s request for $112.5 million in fees. Provost Umphrey and Locks Law Firm are among the firms bringing the motions.
Corporate ‘Hellions’?
The annual “Judicial Hellholes” report from The American Tort Reform Association might have some competition: The nation’s largest plaintiffs bar group now has a survey of its own – thought not quite with the same catchy name. Here’s the “Worst Corporate Conduct of 2017,” a report from the American Association for Justice.
Targeted by the report as worst offender was McKesson Corp., a distributor of prescription opioids. Others on the list were Equifax for its massive data breach, Wells Fargo for its “seemingly never-ending series of schemes to rip off its customers,” and Wall Street’s lobbying push to reverse an anti-arbitration rule imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The report also noted the settlements Fox News paid to resolve sexual harassment and discrimination claims.
“It’s just something we thought of this year,” AAJ researcher David Ratcliff told me. “It’s not ‘Judicial Hellholes,’ but we hope it’s better written.”
And here’s a bit more news:
Talc Turns: After a string of double-digit verdicts last year, Johnson & Johnson turned the tide in 2017 in the litigation alleging its talcum powderproducts caused women to get ovarian cancer. Here’s my story on how they did it. And this week, to top it off, a Missouri Court of Appeals denied a plaintiffs’ petition to reconsider its reversal of a $72 million verdict in 2016 — the very first talc award. In a statement, lead plaintiffs attorney Ted Meadows of Beasley Allen said he planned to go to the Missouri Supreme Court, citing “fundamental issues of due process.”
A Fine Mesh: Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit has asked a Philadelphia state court judge to ease their path to expediting its appeal of his order tossing only one of the nearly 120 pelvic mesh cases, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court ruling this year. Here’s Max’s report. Drinker Biddle’s Melissa Merk, Ethicon’s attorney, called it a “substantial issue of jurisdiction.”
Into the Breach: Was 2017 the year of the data breach? Law.com’s Rhys Dipshan has listed the eight most significant breaches of the year. Of course, Equifax and Uber are on there. But so are the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the hack that hit DLA Piper.
Check It Twice: Before you get to that last minute holiday shopping, check out this list on www.classaction.com (run by Morgan & Morgan) of the 10 most dangerous gifts you could buy. “Smart toys,” like the Furby Connect, could place children’s privacy at risk, the report said. Drones “have malfunctioned and collided with people,” requiring stitches, and some fidget spinners contain unsafe levels of lead or may burst into flames according to the list.
How about a nice fruit cake instead? Happy holidays!
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The Foster Care System Is Flooded With Children Of The Opioid Epidemic
Dec 23, 2017 | NPR Weekend Edition
By Scott Simon
Audio link: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/23/573021632/the-foster-care-system-is-flooded-with-children-of-the-opioid-epidemic
The U.S. foster care system is overwhelmed, in part because America's opioid crisis is overwhelming. Thousands of children have had to be taken out of the care of parents or a parent who is addicted.
Indiana is among the states that have seen the largest one-year increase in the number of children who need foster care. Judge Marilyn Moores, who heads the juvenile court in Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, says the health crisis is straining resources in Indiana.
"We've gone from having 2,500 children in care, three years ago, to having 5,500 kids in care. It has just exploded our systems," Moores says.
While laws in all U.S. states require that child welfare agencies make "reasonable efforts" to reunify parents with their children, Moores says that process can be especially traumatic for children whose parents often relapse.
She says that more legal consideration should be paid to the child's rights and safety and that "right now, that balance does not tip legally in favor of the child."
Earlier this year, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency. But that designation "didn't come with money," Moores says. "And that is sadly what the necessity is." She says reform is needed, and it should focus on "how much in the way of resources should be devoted to trying to reunify children with parents who cannot conquer their addiction."
Interview Highlights
On what kind of cases she is seeing
One of the hallmarks is we're seeing many younger children than we had seen before. I think the average age is about three years younger than we had seen. We see lots and lots of opioid-addicted babies following their releases from NICUs [neonatal intensive care units] where they went through withdrawal from opioid addiction that they suffered in utero. We see kids — little, itty-bitty kids — that are found in car seats in the backs of cars where parents have overdosed in the front seat. And because of the age of the children, we can't safely leave them with addicted parents. And so, it has just over-rolled our system.
On how her division has been grappling with the influx
Well, we're scrambling. I've had kids that I've had to find a foster home for — not in Marion Country, but in Lake County, which is by Chicago. That's a two-and-a-half-hour drive. How can I reunify parents with a child where they can't even see their child on a regular basis?
We have kids who are sleeping in the Department of Child Services office because there are no homes for them that can be quickly found. Our public defenders, our DCS case managers, our guardians ad litem, our judicial officers are all overwhelmed. But everyone pulls together to try their very best to ensure child safety.
On whether to prioritize the reunification of child with a parent who is an addict
There's a lot of debate about that, but the law requires that reasonable effort be made to reunify first. Sadly, in some cases, the law has determined that parents have a due process right to their children. In other words, we treat children like chattel of their parents, like possessions, and these are Supreme Court precedent. I think that many of those precedents were issued at a time when keeping kids with parents, there were extended families who were able to help support and take care of kids, but we don't have that now. And I wonder if the law isn't antiquated in that regard.
It's been incredibly difficult for funding to keep pace with the need and the demand for services. Our director of Department of Child Services just resigned and issued a letter saying that the constraints that the budget was placing on her all but ensured children would die.
On whether President Trump's designation has had any effect
It didn't come with money. And that is sadly what the necessity is. That and, we need legal reform. We need reform that literally looks and says, "How much in the way of resources should be devoted to trying to reunify children with parents who cannot conquer their addiction?"
The recidivist rate for opioid addiction is somewhere in the 70 percent. We can't keep parents sober long enough to reunify their children with them. And even those efforts come at great costs to the taxpayers, and they come at even greater costs for the children because being in this system is a trauma for children and these back-and-forth attempts in trying to reunify them with their parents is scarring these children.
On addicts whose only motivation to get clean is becoming a good parent
I think that we need to make reasonable efforts to try and reunify, but we have to have a better balancing of the child's right to safety, security, a right to pursue happiness, and honor that child's life as much as we're honoring the parents' right. And right now, that balance does not tip legally in favor of the child.
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Robert Gebelhoff: Complicity a big factor in America’s opioid crisis (OPINION)
Dec 19, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Robert Gebelhoff
For years, the opioid crisis was described as one of negligence. In this narrative, doctors overprescribed pills that shouldn’t have gone to patients and pharmaceutical companies overzealously promoted medications while playing down the risks.
But new reporting demonstrates how this version, as worrying as it sounds, might understate the role of drugmakers in the opioid crisis. The Post and “60 Minutes” reported that some of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s most experienced investigators believed criminal charges were warranted against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, alleging that the company, McKesson Corp., did little to prevent huge quantities of addictive opioid medications from being diverted to illegal use by pharmacies that were, in some cases, knowingly supplying illegal drug rings.
In other words, this isn’t just a story of simple negligence; it’s a story about whether drug manufacturers and distributors turned a willfully blind eye toward illegal drug trafficking.
Defenders of opioid painkillers often argue that these medications are essential to people with chronic pain and that the vast majority of opioid prescriptions do not result in addiction or abuse. Instead, they contend, the prescription drug crisis is a myth and the real problems are more powerful, nonmedicinal opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, which account for the lion’s share of overdoses in the country.
But to focus only on these facts lets drug producers off the hook. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has found that nearly 80 percent of all heroin users in the United States started with prescription opioids. Some of these people began using opioids through pain treatments; others became addicted as millions of pillsstarting pouring into pharmacies and ended up in black markets.
The Post’s investigation illustrates a distribution system in which pharmacies, drug manufacturers and even regulators and lawmakers all played some role — knowingly or not — in a chain that reached massive numbers of illicit users. McKesson was not charged with a crime — DEA investigators who pressed for charges were overruled by the Justice Department in 2015 — and the company denied any “criminal intent or the violation of any criminal law” in a statement to The Post. But DEA agents reported that the company failed to review orders of “suspicious activity,” according to documents obtained by The Post.
In one instance described by The Post, McKesson supplied so much oxycodone to a single pharmacist in Colorado that the company not only filled his orders, it actively raised the limit that it had set for shipments of opioid painkillers to the pharmacy. Even though that pharmacist was selling as many as 2,000 pain pills a day — in a city with 38,000 people — McKesson didn’t report the activity until after the DEA opened a criminal investigation against the pharmacist, who is now in prison for drug trafficking.
Even still, DEA lawyers opted not to pursue criminal charges or take administrative action against the company. Instead, they settled with McKesson — not even going so far as to take away the company’s accreditation to distribute products in the states where its drugs ended up in the hands of criminals.
So far, DEA has fined McKesson twice for its opioid distribution practices — a $13.25 million fine in 2008 and another $150 million earlier this year. But McKesson, a Fortune 500 company, has revenues of almost $200 billion annually. More than $2 billion of that money is profit. The company’s chief executive alone has made $639 million over the past decade.
Demanding more action from the government is not meant to disrupt the lives of patients with pain. It’s to ensure that those who have been feeding the deadly addictions of our most vulnerable — while reaping hefty profits in the process — are held accountable.
This is not too much to ask. There’s an abundance of corpses and orphaned children across the country that tells us why.
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Editorial: The epidemic that's shortening American lives
Dec 22, 2017 | The Chicago Tribune
By Staff
The story of modern life has been one of people enjoying better health and living longer. In the United States, life expectancy at birth has inched up almost every year over the past half century, going from under 70 years in 1963 to nearly 79 years in 2014. But the progress that once seemed automatic has stopped. Last year, for the second consecutive year, life expectancy declined.
This is not because of a surge in heart attacks among retirees. In fact, life expectancy at age 65 rose a bit in 2016. The overall decline stems from an increase in the death rate among younger people. In the 15-24 age group, mortality rose by almost 8 percent; among those 25-34, it jumped by more than 10 percent. Only among seniors did the death rate decline.
What’s going on? More than anything else, the increase is attributable to an epidemic of fatalities from drug overdoses. Last year, 63,632 people died this way — up from 16,849 in 1999. The number of fatalities exceeded the number of Americans who died from auto accidents and gun homicides combined.
More than 3 in 4 of the overdose deaths involved opioids. Heroin and prescription painkillers account for the majority, but the newest and most lethal drug is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. Deaths involving this and other synthetic opioids (excluding methadone) more than doubled last year, to 19,413.
Drug overdoses now have eclipsed the AIDS epidemic at its height. In October, President Donald Trump declared the problem a public health emergency. Soon after, a White House commission chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie published a report recommending dozens of changes, including giving states more leeway in the use of federal funds, tightening regulation of opioid prescribing and expanding medication-assisted treatment with such drugs as methadone and buprenorphine.
As is, nearly 90 percent of those who need this therapy go without. Treatment would be especially useful among low-level drug offenders, who could be diverted from incarceration, and among inmates, who are prone to dying of overdoses when they resume using opioids after months or years behind bars.
A serious effort would cost money. “I would say that you’re going to see this president initially ask for billions of dollars to deal with this,” Christie predicted. But Trump has yet to do so.
Some helpful options, however, were passed over. One is encouraging states to allow the use of cannabis through medical dispensaries. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that states that legalized medical marijuana saw a sharp percentage decline in opioid-related deaths.
Another option: expanding programs that provide clean syringes to drug users — a method proven effective in combating the spread of HIV. As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence suspended the state ban on needle-exchange programs for a county that was suffering an outbreak of HIV spread through drug use.
More vigorous law enforcement may help, but it can also have unwanted side effects. Fentanyl has spread partly because it is so strong and easy to make in labs, inducing illicit dealers to mix it with heroin. But because of its potency, unwitting users can easily overdose. And the usual doses of naloxone, which is used to reverse overdoses, are not always sufficient to save someone on fentanyl.
Suing drug companies for their role in the expanded use of opioids isn’t a promising route. On Thursday, five suburban Chicago counties filed suit accusing pharmaceutical makers of “aggressive and fraudulent marking of prescription opioid painkillers,” echoing past litigation against the tobacco industry. Courts are likely to balk, given that medical drugs, doctors and pharmacies are subject to extensive regulation. Unlike cigarettes, these drugs have important uses and considerable value for suffering patients.
Most important in turning the tide is for governments at every level to recognize the scope and severity of the epidemic — and soon. For the tens of thousands of Americans at risk of dying from drug overdoses next year, time is running out.
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Painkiller addictions often start in the doctor's office, but prescribers are rarely punished
Dec 24, 2017 | The Post and Courier (SC)
By Mary Katherine Wideman
To hear Dr. Charles Bruyere tell it, his problem was he had too much empathy. That’s why he doled out painkillers at such a high rate, why he landed in jail and why he was stripped of his medical license, he said.
The former physician, who operated a cash-only pain management clinic in Greenwood, said he didn’t know he was breaking the law by writing prescriptions for future dates when he would be out of the country. And anyway, he doesn't believe in opioid addiction, or doesn't believe doctors should have to take responsibility. The blame, he said, lies with the American people.
"There are so many people that just lie about their situation," Bruyere, 64, said. "I don't know that the doctor has to accept the blame."
The state didn’t see it his way. In stripping Bruyere of his license two years ago, authorities noted he kept prescribing painkillers to people who had lost medications, were suspected of doctor-shopping or were downing more pills than prescribed. Investigators said he ignored worries from a spouse that one patient was becoming addicted. He gave more painkillers to another after learning the patient was in a methadone clinic, according to a state order.
Criminal cases against doctors like Bruyere remain rare in South Carolina, where experts say most prescription blunders tend to be rooted in physicians' desire to help ease their patients' pain. But overprescribing of highly addictive painkillers remains a persistent problem that endangers lives and contributes to an opioid epidemic Gov. Henry McMaster described as a "silent hurricane" that is only getting worse.
In 2016, 616 people died of opioid-related overdoses in South Carolina, according to state data. McMaster declared a state of emergency Monday and limited pill amounts for opioid painkillers to five days when used following a hospital stay. While opioid prescription rates in the state have been on the decline, South Carolina remains in the top 10 of states that prescribe the most of these addictive drugs. The Palmetto State comes in ninth, between West Virginia and Michigan.
It may begin with an Oxycontin allowance after having wisdom teeth pulled, or with leftover drugs carelessly kept and taken from a medicine drawer. Either way, most opioid addictions start with pills and shift to heroin and fentanyl, the culprits behind many overdoses.
Even given the gravity of the problem, poor prescribing practices are generally not illegal, or if they are, it's hard to prove. There is nothing necessarily criminal about prescribing an opioid, even in excess. Most doctors and public health experts said a strong public health campaign and better treatment opportunities are needed, not a more forceful law enforcement response.
Dr. John Emmel, medical director at Charleston County's substance abuse clinic, said most doctors are simply acting out of compassion and trying to help their patients feel better.
"There are a few doing it wrong," Emmel said. "But most are just trying to do what they've been taught."The state's response
An effort to change doctors' practices has spurred a massive public health campaign. Coalitions of state health leaders, including a new one announced by the governor last week, have popped up around the state to combat the crisis. Physicians are now required to check a database before they prescribe a narcotic, which has been shown to cut down on doctor-shopping. Doctors are required to complete courses on prescribing practices.
The state's Bureau of Drug Control investigates criminal allegations against health care practitioners and makes arrests when warranted. But it is rare. The law enforcement agency, an outfit of the Department of Health and Environmental Control, has arrested 179 health care practitioners since 2016. Only 16 had a medical degree.
Most others were nurses, pharmacists or pharmacy technicians. And most were arrested for crimes like obtaining drugs or poor record-keeping. Four doctors were arrested for distribution of narcotics.
There is no reliable pattern for pinpointing cases of irresponsible prescribing, and the bureau relies heavily on complaints to identify doctors who may be breaking the law, said Adrianna Bradley, a spokeswoman for the state's Bureau of Drug Control. The bureau investigates as many as 1,000 such complaints every year, according to its website.
There are some tell-tale signs that investigators look for, including high-volume prescribers, Bradley said. They will also be wary of practitioners whose patients are young, travel long distances or complain often of lower back pain, for example.
The state's Board of Medical Examiners also fields complaints. Dr. Jeffrey A. Welsh, chairman of the board, said in a prepared statement the board takes complaints from the Bureau of Drug Control and from the public. Complaints, or any information about them, are shielded from public view by the state's public records laws.
A Post and Courier review of every order the board has issued in the last five years shows many cases of doctors mishandling opioid prescriptions, but given there is scant public information about each case, the trail is murky.
About 220 physicians have appeared in front of the board in the five years since 2012. Of those, 60 could be identified as cases of mishandling of prescriptions. Most either prescribed to an acquaintance or took the medications themselves, however.
There could be many more cases — in another 78 instances, the board did not specify why the physician appeared.
Welsh said the board released pain management recommendations this year. In cases where a doctor has acted in bad faith, Welsh said the board can restrict a license, require training or ultimately revoke the license.
"While prescribing a narcotic is not a crime, prescribers are required to uphold the appropriate standard of care for prescribing," he said. "The Board utilizes its collective wisdom ... in determining whether a licensee is prescribing outside the standard of care when presented with a specific set of circumstances."'Too much to too many people'
Bruyere saw about 100 patients each week at Color-Me-Well Family Medicine, the clinic he owned in Greenwood. Authorities said he missed multiple red flags in his treatment of patients, prescribing "overlapping opioids in high doses with high abuse potential."
The self-described "fixture of the community" was arrested at a YMCA while working out during a lunch break in July 2010. He served 10 days in jail, pleading guilty to 20 counts of violating the state's drug distribution laws. The state's board of medicine revoked his license in 2015.
Bruyere told The Post and Courier he did not tolerate abuse of the opioids he was prescribing. He said he let about 180 patients go over the years. He also told the medical board he had been instructed there was no upper limit to prescribing opioids, and indicated he was within the guidelines of the Food and Drug Administration. The board did not accuse him otherwise.
"It's almost impossible to tell who's doing right and who's not doing right," he said.
Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo, who oversees criminal prosecutions in Greenwood County, said he hasn't seen many of these kinds of cases come through his office. But he acknowledged that "overprescribing" cases can be difficult to prove because prosecutors must show that criminal intent exists in providing patients with narcotics, he said.
"They may be doing that in excess, but that might not be a crime," he said. "It's starting out as a legitimate medical issue."
It takes time for investigators to build cases, Stumbo explained, and that is particularly true for medical professionals, who often do not have a criminal history. "You don't want a half-baked investigation that might ruin someone's career," he said.
The state's Bureau of Drug Control took longer to arrest doctors of medicine and dentistry following a complaint, compared to nurses and other technicians. The bureau took 130 days on average for practitioners with a medical degree, compared to 50 days for other health professionals.
Among the cases, state investigators determined:
- A Charleston doctor prescribed more than 4,000 Oxycodone pills to one patient in 10 months, including a prescription for 735 of the pills at one time. His wife, when contacted, said he suffers from dementia. He surrendered his medical license.
- A rural doctor near Florence was caught at the Charlotte airport with 23 different drugs including 111 Oxycodone pills, 13 prescriptions on a pad and an ammunition magazine without a gun. He told the medical board he comes from an underserved community and was trying to be "too much to too many people." The board reinstated his license but gave little other information about his motivations.
- Another doctor sold Oxycontin to undercover officers in Marion County. He pleaded guilty to unlawful distribution and was sentenced to five years in prison. He told a "customer" he could provide "anything" they wanted and bragged about the amount of Oxycontin he had access to, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent wrote in an affidavit.
- A doctor in Conway irresponsibly prescribed opioids for pain. The board accused the doctor, who is still in practice, of ignoring his patients' drug-seeking behavior.
Eight people were charged with the same offense as Bruyere in 2016, according to court records, but details about those cases were not immediately available. Two were convicted of the crime. Prescriptions on the decline, but not enough
Emmel pointed out rates of opioid prescriptions have been declining for years. From his perspective at the Charleston Center, his patients' fixations have shifted to the more powerful — and cheaper — street drugs. But he said cutting down the volume of prescriptions even more would likely prevent more new addictions.
South Carolina no longer prescribes more opioids than there are people in the state, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, the rate was about 89 prescriptions for every 100 people in the state, representing a drop of about 12 percent since 2014.
Christina Andrews, an addiction researcher at the University of South Carolina, said the rate of decline is just not enough. Compared with other countries, she said, American doctors still prescribe an unreasonable amount of opioids.
"This is the birthplace of a lot of these issues," she said. "Now we know how harmful they are, but we haven't seen very dramatic reductions in these pills."
Kathleen Brady, vice president for research at the Medical University of South Carolina, said it wasn't uncommon in the past for patients to leave a surgeon's office or a hospital with a month's supply of opioids. But Brady, one of MUSC's most esteemed researchers and an expert in substance abuse, was optimistic about the governor's decision. She said limiting the volume of prescriptions could indeed cut back on overdoses.
That practice is fueling much of the addiction seen today, Emmel said. At the Charleston Center, he said most new patients have already been struggling with addiction for years.
Brady said patients have to accept responsibility, too, when they neglect to get rid of pills they don't use.
"I think people feel like they paid for that drug," Brady said. "People generally tend to hang on to medications."
To only talk about law enforcement and cracking down on fraud is grandstanding, Andrews said. As concerns circulate that the state is barreling toward a heroin and fentanyl problem to the order of West Virginia or Ohio's, Andrews said the focus may be misplaced. Making treatment more available, she said, is the only good solution.
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Editorial: Lawsuit may help recovery of those affected by opioid addiction
Dec 26, 2017 | Greenfield Recorder (MA)
By Staff
Treating America’s opioid addiction crisis is, tragically, creating a growth industry that provides long-term intervention and treatment for millions of our fellow citizens. But who is going to pay the tab? Families? Insurance companies? State, local and federal governments?
Big Pharma has a responsibility and will join the list, especially if many of the nation’s cities and states have their way, in court.
Greenfield has become the first community in Massachusetts to file a lawsuit against opioid distributors and manufacturers, joining dozens of other state and local jurisdictions across the country that are looking for financial reparations for the ongoing epidemic. About 2 million people in America are said to be addicted to prescription painkillers, and at least another half million to heroin.
The Greenfield lawsuit contends the drug makers and distributors were negligent in not adequately controlling the overuse and abuse of their dangerous products. Congress passed a law in 1970 to have manufacturers “halt suspicious orders and control against the diversion of these dangerous drugs to illegitimate uses,” according to the suit in the U.S. District Court in Springfield.
Greenfield Mayor William Martin hopes this lawsuit will do two things: Raise awareness of the extent of the problem locally, and help the town cope with the expensive consequences of the epidemic.
“We wouldn’t have this situation if we didn’t have lax monitoring of opioids,” Martin argues.
The defendants named in the suit include big-name companies like Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma.
Purdue Pharma responded to the Greenfield lawsuit saying “We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and are dedicated to being part of the solution. ... We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.” We’ll see if they can have it both ways.
This case — perhaps like similar ones that eventually won billions in damages from the cigarette industry in the 1990s — could help pay for the societal costs of recovery and treatment of today’s and tomorrow’s addicts. It would be a just outcome if the courts find the drug makers did, in fact, underplay the addictive nature of the drugs, while pushing their prescription by doctors eager to ease their patients’ pain.
Sadly, even draining the deep pockets of pharmaceutical companies won’t cover the massive costs the nation is just beginning to incur, because we are still a long way from stamping out this national plague — which by many measures is still growing.
It’s a disease easily acquired and dreadfully difficult to overcome, as the powerful, mind-altering drugs hijack the brain’s chemistry and rewire its circuitry in ways difficult to reverse.
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan, a co-founder of the regional opioid task force, agreed with the goal of the lawsuit.
“Opioid manufacturers and distributors need to be held accountable for their outrageous sales and marketing practices,” Sullivan said in a statement. “Their reckless conduct has inflicted death and sorrow in every community in America. The funds recovered should go toward prevention, treatment and recovery.”
We applaud the effort by Greenfield and other communities to seek financial help from those who may be culpable for this epidemic.
But even with big bucks from Big Pharma, we wonder just how much society will end up paying for this epidemic — not just in ways that we measure in dollars and cents, but also in the personal and family pain and suffering no pill or financial settlement can ease.
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Opioid crisis straining local, state child welfare system
Dec 26, 2017 | Times-Gazette (OH)
By Mike Buettner
The opioid epidemic is impacting the child welfare system locally and across Ohio with more children in custody than ever before.
Ashland County has seen almost double the number of children in custody in 2017 compared to the same time last year, Department of Job and Family Services social services administrator Jana Carroll said Friday.
As of Dec. 22, there were 130 children in the custody of the local Department. That number includes 28 in therapeutic care, 29 in foster care and 67 with relative placement.
At this time last year, the Department had custody of 80 children.
The Department has received fewer calls alleging abuse or neglect this year but more are being screened for investigation. The county received 1,004 intake calls with 411 screened for investigation in 2016.
To date in 2017, the Department has received 955 calls with 436 screened for investigation.
About 64 percent of those calls involve an allegation of parental drug use, as of the last quarterly update in October.
“Unfortunately, the drug crisis is definitely taking a toll throughout the entire state,” Carroll said.
One positive statistic for Ashland County is a dramatic increase in the last 18 months in the number of licensed foster homes, which currently stands at 19. That number had dwindled to a low of three in July 2016 before the Fostering Family Ministries awareness and recruitment campaign was formed in September 2016 to address the number of foster homes needed.
“That’s definitely improving and we have more in the process of being licensed,” Carroll said. “We’re making great strides.”
But even with more foster families, it’s still not enough to keep up with the increasing numbers of children in custody fueled by the opioid epidemic. Carroll said while the number of cases driven by drug abuse may be disheartening at times, the Department is working hard to make sure local children are cared for.
“It’s very sad but true that children are making their way into care with the opioid crisis,” Carroll said. “We hope we can find permanent housing for more kids. We’re working very diligently to make sure children are safe.”
Ashland County’s numbers are reflected statewide with the opioid crisis swamping the state’s foster-care system.
More than 15,500 children were in foster care as of October, but Ohio has only 7,200 foster homes, according to a report released Thursday by the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, a group that represents county children services agencies. There are nearly 3,000 more children in the child welfare system today than when the opioid crisis began seven years ago.
Half of the children taken into custody in 2015 had a parent who used drugs, and more than a quarter had a parent who specifically used opioids, according to the report.
If children keep entering the system at the current pace, Ohio will have more than 20,000 children in foster homes or residential facilities by 2020 at a cost of more than $550 million a year, according to the report.
In an effort to recruit more foster families statewide, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Wednesday that eight counties hit hard by the opioid epidemic have been chosen to participate in a family finding and foster family recruitment program that somewhat mirrors Ashland County’s Fostering Family Ministries.
“Ohio still has a great need for families to help children in foster care,” DeWine said. “These can be biological family members or those who feel called to serve children in need.”
The pilot counties include Allen, Clark, Cuyahoga, Fairfield, Highland, Montgomery, Summit and Stark.
The pilot program, which is part of a $1 million grant DeWine announced in August, provides for the cost of a full-time staff member in each county who would be responsible for family search and engagement and foster family recruitment. The program will be administered by the Waiting Child Fund, a nonprofit with expertise in foster care which has pledged to contribute additional funds to the effort.
“Children are entering foster care throughout the state at an alarming rate,” said Mike Kenney, executive director of Waiting Child Fund. “The Attorney General is responding to this crisis by investing in a proven solution which empowers and supports kinship and foster families.”
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We cannot litigate our way out of the opioid crisis (OPINION)
Dec 26, 2017 | Kentucky Today
By Mark Wohlander
More than twenty years after Purdue Pharma launched its first advertising campaign to tout a new miracle drug known as OxyContin, state governments have scrambled to find a political solution to end the opioid crisis in our country.
After more than 20 years, the question we must ask ourselves is whether we really want to end the opioid crisis, or whether we are only interested in looking for someone to point the finger of blame at for our failure to find an answer to a problem which will never be solved through legislation, or for that matter a problem which will never be solved through endless lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies responsible for manufacturing and distributing controlled substances.
Unless you were just rescued from an island where you have been stranded for the past twenty years, you probably know that at least in part that ground zero for the opioid crisis in this country can be traced to 1996, the year the Food & Drug Administration approved Oxycontin for distribution as a the “first formulation of oxycodone that allowed dosing every 12 hours instead of every 4 to 6 hours.” From 1996, until today, oxycodone, and other synthetic drugs, have contributed to a growing opioid epidemic which has claimed thousands of lives, and destroyed communities in every corner or our country.
Recently, Attorney General Andy Beshear filed a lawsuit against Endo Pharmaceuticals and Endo Health Solutions which in his words was done “to hold Endo responsible for unlawfully building a market for the chronic use of opioids in the name of increasing corporate profits, knowing all along the dangers of Opana ER that led to devastating effects on the Commonwealth.” In the words of Attorney General Beshear, “My office refuses to sit back and watch families be torn apart while opioid manufacturers like Endo line their pockets at the expense of our communities and our future.” After the settlement in the Purdue Pharma case which was defended by Attorney General Beshear’s former law firm, it is somewhat difficult to understand how he could make the statement with a straight face. Very candidly, instead of more lawsuits, it is time to come together as a country and find real solutions to the opioid crisis, a crisis which is far more complex and far-reaching than the conduct of individual pharmaceutical companies.
So, should we excuse the conduct of Endo Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma, or any of the other pharmaceutical companies responsible for manufacturing and distributing drugs which have a high potential for abuse? Well, the answer is not that simple. Take a moment to think about a world without drugs. Consider if you will just exactly what would happen if we filed a lawsuit against every pharmaceutical company responsible for manufacturing any of the twenty-one listed Schedule II substances, substances which have been defined as having a high potential for abuse, yet substances which have been defined as having a current and acceptable medical use?
What would, and will likely happen if we continue down a path of endless lawsuits against every pharmaceutical company responsible for the manufacture and distribution of Schedule II drugs is that the day will come when pharmaceutical companies will no longer pour millions of dollars into research to find the next new miracle drug which could save countless lives. What would, and will likely happen is that the day will come when pharmaceutical companies will be forced into bankruptcy which will end the availability of those drugs legally manufactured, drugs which not only end pain, but also drugs which provide cures for thousands upon thousands of medical problems. What would, and will likely happen if continue down a path of endless lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies is that we won’t have to worry about an opioid crisis because there won’t be any opioids, or for that matter any other Schedule II controlled substances. What would, and will likely happen is that we will have succeeded in returning the practice of medicine to the dark ages, a time when a shot of whiskey was used to both control pain and as a cure for myriad medical problems.
So, what we really need to ask ourselves is whether endless lawsuits against every pharmaceutical company in this country will result in a solution to the opioid epidemic? Very honestly, the answer is simple, the epidemic will not end. For anyone who has been on the front lines of the opioid crisis, it is well known that opioids are nothing more than a synthetic replacement for opiates which are derived from the opium poppy. When someone is addicted to an opioid, and that someone can no longer get a legal prescription, then more than likely the addicted person will have little choice other than to get their drugs on the streets where there are unlimited supplies of opioids which are manufactured by the drug cartels and smuggled into this country. Or worse yet, the addicted person will be forced to resort to an illegal replacement drug such as heroin, or one of the opioid analgesics such as fentanyl or carfentanyl both of which are readily available as a substitute for legally prescribed opioids.
Candidly, there are many questions which need to be answered before Kentucky continues down a path of filing countless lawsuits against other pharmaceutical companies as a so-called means to end our opioid crisis. First, and foremost, what needs to be answered is what evidence does Kentucky have that pharmaceuticals sold by Endo, or any other pharmaceutical company for that matter was the opioid ingested by an overdose victim? Next, what evidence is there that even if there are trace amounts of opioids in the system of an overdose victim that the opioid was obtained legally from a pharmaceutical company, or whether the opioid was obtained from opioids illegally smuggled into this country and sold on the streets of every community in this country. While there are many other questions which will necessarily have to be answered as the lawsuit against Endo proceeds, or before Kentucky decides to file other lawsuits, it is clear from the outset that Kentucky has a very tall mountain to climb.
After more than 20 years, one is left to ask the rhetorical question of what can be done to end the opioid crisis in this country? Although there are no easy solutions to the opioid crisis, maybe, just maybe, instead of endless lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies, as a country we should come together and work with the pharmaceutical companies to put in place commonsense solutions to end over-prescribing of opioids. Maybe, just maybe, instead of enriching law firms responsible for the endless lawsuits, we should consider negotiating a master settlement agreement like those which resolved endless years of litigation against asbestos and tobacco manufacturers. Or maybe, just maybe, we should get serious about addiction treatment and the prosecution of those involved in the illegal, not legal distribution of all drugs, not just opioids.
As always, I would invite each of you to join me on my imaginary mountaintop and help me shout to the world and anyone else who is willing to listen that it is time for politicians to stop these endless lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies simply to generate publicity for their next political campaign. If you are one of the thousands upon thousands who have lost a family member or friend, please join me on my imaginary mountaintop and help me shout to the world and anyone else who is willing to listen that the time has come for all of us to sit down at the table and consider actual solutions to our opioid crisis, solutions which would include treatment for those addicted to opioids and other drugs.
In the end, we need to get serious and find a way to end a crisis which has reached epidemic proportions. More importantly, we need to understand that no matter how many lawsuits we file we will never litigate our way out of a crisis which calls for solutions, not verdicts.
Mark Wohlander, a former FBI and federal prosecutor, practices law in Lexington, Kentucky. -
Tribune Editorial: Best drug policy will be built on reducing demand, not supply
Dec 27, 2017 | The Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
By Staff
So how bad is this opioid thing?
• Greg Hughes, speaker of the Utah House, is openly encouraging government attorneys to sue Fortune 500 corporations, hardly a conventional strategy for a die-hard Republican.
• Poll after poll shows three quarters of the state, and more than half of Mormons, are down with legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. And it’s not glaucoma patients driving the numbers. It is the relatives of people trying to ease off opioids with marijuana. Their willingness is backed by data that shows overdoses decline in states with legal medical marijuana.
Even in the land of clean living, better stoned than dead.
Such is the sweeping effect of opiates and their synthetic cousin, opioids. The scourge has penetrated all walks of life, often starting with a sports injury or surgical procedure and ending with a needle in an arm and a heart that stops beating. It is viewed as a national crisis, and Utah’s overdose rate has consistently exceeded the national average.
Even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to adapt. DEA officials and the Utah Attorney General’s Office recently announced rollout of its DEA 360 program in Utah, the ninth jurisdiction in the country to join the effort. DEA and Utah officials say the new effort aims to reduce drug use by targeting distributors with increased enforcement while targeting users with increased education.
“We’re going after dealers so there are less users,” Utah’s DEA special agent in charge said when the program was announced.
That sounds a lot like the old approach at DEA, which for decades has led the nation’s expensive and unsuccessful effort to curb drug use by trying to cut off supply.
If we’re really still thinking we can shut down the drug pipeline by spending more money on interdiction, recent numbers released by the Utah Department of Public Safety may offer a reality check. The department reported last week that its agents and Utah Highway Patrol troopers stopped 226 vehicles carrying narcotics this year. In addition to marijuana and methamphetamine, 46 pounds of heroin and 1,100 pills were seized.
Only 1,100 pills? That could be a monthly total for one abuser. And 46 pounds of heroin likely is not even 1 percent of what gets consumed in Utah.
The lasting solution is to reduce the demand for drugs, and that isn’t easy. It takes good treatment programs and a social safety net to get people into those programs. Even then, some will still die. But if we spend more on reducing the number of addicts, we’ll be hitting the suppliers right where it counts.
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Opinion: Opioid lawsuit would be a step in right direction
Dec 28, 2017 | Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
By Tuscaloosa News Editorial Board via AP
For the past few years, NFL football players have worn pink during the month of October in an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer. The league moved last year to end the practice, but you still see players wearing the color. It is a worthwhile cause that has led to increased donations. But breast cancer, as bad as it is, now kills fewer Americans each year than opioids.
In 2016, there were 41,070 Americans who died from breast cancer, but there were 42,249 overdose deaths involving opioids that same year. Opioids were involved in the majority of the more than 63,600 overdose deaths last year.
And, as pharmaceutical companies get richer, the problem is only getting worse. U.S. deaths from drug overdoses increased a whopping 21 percent in 2016. Preliminary 2017 data shows that the rise in overdose deaths is continuing. It is such a problem that it is dragging down the overall life expectancy of Americans for the second straight year.
While the problem is nationwide, it is especially troubling in Alabama, where we have more opioid painkiller prescriptions than people. A recent study by Quintiles IMS found earlier this year that there are 1.18 opioid prescriptions per person in Alabama, which was the worst ratio of all states.
There's no way that pharmaceutical companies don't know that they are shipping more of these drugs than are needed in Alabama. There's no way that doctors prescribing these highly addictive drugs at such a remarkable rate are unaware they are being abused.
Back in June, the New York Times reported that overdoses are now the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 50, outpacing disease, car crashes or gun violence. That same month Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office Chief Loyd Baker told a local meeting of the League of Women Voters that "drugs are the underlying current, affecting everything we do." He said about 21 to 23 people die from opioid overdoses in Tuscaloosa County each year.
It's time to address this incredibly serious problem in a serious way, a way that gets results, so we're heartened to hear that Tuscaloosa County's largest local governments are considering participating in a class-action lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of opioid drugs. Tuscaloosa County, the city of Tuscaloosa and the city of Northport are all in the process of doing due diligence and researching which law firm they should choose.
While joining the lawsuits isn't a panacea that will make this problem go away, it is a step in the right direction. Settlements have already been reached in other cases brought against the pharmaceutical companies. And Mississippi, Ohio, West Virginia, along with other counties and cities, such as Chicago, have also started litigation.
These companies have enriched themselves while our citizens are addicted and dying. They've wreaked havoc in our communities and depleted resources and we're all paying a steep cost.
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These 12 Stories Show How Deadly The Opioid Epidemic Was In 2017
Dec 28, 2017 | BuzzFeed News
By Azeen Ghorayshi
2017 was the year fentanyl became a household name. Here are 12 stories that show just how bad the US opioid epidemic has gotten, the hucksters who have profited, and how much it’ll take to get us out of it.
1. The opioid epidemic in 2017 was actually two separate epidemics.
Drug overdose deaths in the US continue to skyrocket, with opioids causing roughly 60% of them. By the end of 2015, about 33,000 people died as a result of an opioid overdose.
As doctors and law enforcement cracked down on overprescribing of highly addictive painkillers, some patients switched to street drugs like heroin. But "the pills to heroin story can't explain everything," medical epidemiologist Jay Unick of the University of Maryland told BuzzFeed News.
Age can. In a study reported at an April drug abuse conference, Unick showed that heroin addiction is increasing fastest among people in their twenties, whereas the roughly 15,000 people who died from painkiller overdoses in 2015 tended to be in their fifties and early sixties.
That divide has created what researchers call “two epidemics,” making it even harder to find a solution.
2. Super-potent fentanyl is now the leading cause of US overdose deaths.
The biggest killers to emerge in the last several years of the opioid epidemic are fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which collectively killed more than 20,000people last year, according to CDC data.
These synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl derivatives such as carfentanil, are now everywhere: mixed in with the illicit drug supply of heroin and counterfeit pain pills, as well as other drugs like cocaine. As a result, in 2017, synthetic opioids roughly doubled their share of overdose deaths.
3. These charts tell you everything you need to know about the role fentanyl is playing in the US overdose crisis.
Part of the growing problem of fentanyl is that it is extremely cheap and extremely potent. In pure market terms, in 2017, a kilo of heroin could net a drug dealer $60,000, whereas a kilo of fentanyl would get them closer to $1.2 million. But fentanyl is also 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, and just 2 or 3 milligrams of it — the size of a pinch of sand — can kill.
“It’s our deadliest concern,” Russ Baer of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told BuzzFeed News.
4. As law enforcement cracks down on the drug supply, police dogs are overdosing on fentanyl, too.
Because fentanyl is so powerful, investigators often have to wear masks, gloves, and even full hazmat suits to conduct searches. (Even a sniff can lead to an overdose, although concerns about police officers needing protective equipment came under fire from medical toxicologists this summer.)
For drug dogs, that’s an even bigger issue, since the dogs have to sniff the evidence as part of their jobs. That’s what happened to Primus, Packer, and Finn, three drug dogs working in Broward County, Florida. All three were revived using naloxone.
But the incident poses a bigger question: Do you put dogs at risk of fentanyl exposure, or keep them away, potentially allowing a person to stumble across it instead?
5. Fentanyl could be behind a cluster of amnesia cases among opioid users in Massachusetts.
Doctors in Massachusetts have identified 14 people with damaged hippocampi who suddenly lost the ability to form new memories. Twelve of these people had a history of abusing heroin or other opioids.
It’s a new syndrome that the doctors are claiming has never before been seen. But its causes are mysterious: Some suspect it’s a tainted drug supply, or an unknown side effect of heroin. Others suggest that it’s not mysterious at all, and is just a consequence of repeated overdoses as the opioid epidemic takes an even bigger toll.
Watch this video to hear about the experiences of 28-year-old Max Meehan, the first amnesia case identified in Massachusetts.
6. Reddit banned “/r/opiaterollcall,” a popular forum where buyers and sellers exchanged information to swap cash for drugs.
This story follows the life of 35-year-old Rachel Frazier, a former nurse and mother, who frequently posted on the message board while she quietly struggled with opiate addiction. In September, her husband found her dead in their living room, overdosed on heroin and carfentanil.
/r/Opiaterollcall is just one of the many ways people tried getting opioids online, amid a crackdown on prescribing. But the story details how law enforcement is struggling to police the web, with its wide network of places to turn for drugs, when there are bigger suppliers out there to catch.
7. Meet the Sacklers, the secretive family who made billions off of what would become the opioid epidemic.
This story introduces the secretive Sackler family, whose net worth of $13 billion makes them one of America’s richest. Their money is relatively new, however: It’s the result of their family business, Purdue Pharma, that developed the now-infamous painkiller OxyContin.
First hailed as a medical breakthrough for its treatment of pain when it appeared in 1995, OxyContin was aggressively marketed by Purdue to counter fears of its addictive properties.
In 2007, top executives pleaded guilty to federal prosecutors’ charges that Purdue had misled regulators, doctors, and patients about OxyContin’s risks. The company was fined $635 million. Since 1999, some 200,000 Americans have died from overdoses related to OxyContin and other prescription opioids.
8. One of the companies making the antidote to opioid overdoses also sparked outrage with a hefty price hike.
By 2017, there were many ways to administer naloxone — the only antidote currently used to revive people who overdose on opioids. From a nasal device called Narcan to the old-fashioned vial and syringe, more and more cities are trying to get naloxone into the hands of first responders and drug users, part of a safety-first campaign known as harm reduction.
One device, called Evzio, claims to make the revival process a lot easier through a talking device and an automatic injector. Although it started out costing $575 for a twin pack, the drug’s manufacturer, Virginia-based Kaléo, hiked the price up to $4,100 last year. The steep price tag puts it at roughly 30 to 100 times the cost of alternative naloxone injections.
“Naloxone is the only antidote for an opioid overdose that we’ve got,” Ravi Gupta, a medical student who wrote a paper highlighting the issue, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s egregious that this is happening at all, but it’s way more egregious that this is happening while we’re in the middle of an opioid epidemic.”
9. One company made a genetic test claiming to spot addiction before it hits. Then it was raided by the FBI.
Another company seeking to profit off the opioid epidemic was Proove Biosciences, which touted personalized DNA tests meant to help select pain medications least likely to lead to addiction for each patient. The only problem? It was backed by almost no scientific data showing how reliable the tests were.
And it paid doctors up to $144,000 a year in “research fees” to get results for a clinical trial to prove its effectiveness, according to an investigation by STAT News.
That is, until June of 2017, when 25 FBI agents raided the California-based lab and hauled away boxes of documents as a part of a health care fraud investigation.
10. An unexpected casualty of the opioid epidemic: people with chronic pain who are prescribed high doses of opioid painkiller.
This story follows Paul, one of roughly 2 to 6 million people in the US who suffer from chronic pain and are prescribed extremely high doses of opioid painkillers like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyContin.
The feds are cracking down on prescription pills, recommending that doctors stop prescribing high doses of opioids for chronic pain. But many patients, like Paul, go into drastic withdrawal when the opioids they’ve become dependent on are taken away, and it sometimes leads to suicide.
Some doctors say the problem boils down to how we’ve historically treated pain in the US. “There’s a kind of false empathy when you are providing opioids instead of really treating people, offering them false hope,” one doctor said. “We don’t need more opioids. We need more realism about living with pain.”
11. In 2017, safe injection facilities won their first big victories in the US.
In January, Seattle and King County, Washington, announced that they would be the first places in the US to build so-called “safe injection facilities” for heroin users.
Long promoted by the harm-reduction community but dogged by controversy in the mainstream, there are 100 such sites operating in cities across the world, including in Canada, but zero sanctioned in the US. (One small facility has been operating in secret, at an undisclosed location in the US, for three years.)
The facilities offer anyone who walks through their doors access to clean needles and space to inject. If someone overdoses, nurses are on hand to administer naloxone and revive them. The sites are widely recognized as one part of a many-pronged solution to staving off overdose deaths.
In November, Seattle passed a budget with $1.3 million to build the site. Cities such as New York, San Francisco, Denver, Ithaca, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are also weighing opening sites soon.
12. Kellyanne Conway became the “opioids czar” — though that was up for some fierce debate.
In November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that none other than Kellyanne Conway would oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic. After much public pressure, Trump declared a national public health emergency over the crisis in October, while further public outrage called for an opioids “czar” to lead the effort.
Sessions’ announcement came with some backlash, as some — including the White House — declared that Conway was not actually a “czar.”
But experts said that since Conway is tasked with coordinating federal responses to the epidemic from the White House, she was, in fact, the opioids czar. "If it walks like a czar, talks like a czar, quacks like a czar, it's a czar,” one political scientist told BuzzFeed News.
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China says US not doing enough to cut demand for opioids
Dec 28, 2017 | Steven Jiang
By CNN
China on Thursday turned the table on Washington in addressing the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States."
The biggest challenge China faces in cracking down on the smuggling of opioids is the huge demand from the US," said Yu Haibin, a senior official with the Narcotics Control Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, the country's top law enforcement agency.
"The United States should strengthen its educational and publicity campaigns to reduce domestic demand, intensify its crackdown on internet-based drug crimes, and share more lab data with China to improve our detection and verification capabilities."
Yu also took a jab at America's changing drug environment and its impact."
Quite a number of US states have legalized medical or even recreational use of marijuana," he said at a press conference Thursday. "I think this trend has had a negative effect on public recognition or mentality on the opioid problem."
Fentanyl source
US President Donald Trump in October declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. A report from the Congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission last February labeled China as the primary source of fentanyl -- a cheap synthetic opioid at least 50 times stronger than heroin -- in the US, citing law enforcement and drug investigators.
During his state visit to China last month, Trump brought up the topic with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing. The two leaders agreed to bolster mutual cooperation on fighting narcotic crimes -- and the Chinese authorities on Thursday emphasized recent progress despite some choice words for Washington.
After announcing the listing of five new chemicals -- used to make fentanyl or methamphetamine -- as controlled substances, Chinese officials highlighted their latest success in destroying a fentanyl lab in northern China thanks to a tip from the US immigration and customs agency.
The joint China-US effort resulted in the arrests of 19 suspects in recent months across China as well as the seizure of 4.7 kilograms (10 pounds) of fentanyl and more than 150 kilograms of drug ingredients, according to Chinese officials.
Addressing rising concerns over online sales of opioids originated from China, Yu said the government has stepped up "internet patrol" as well as mandated real-name registration and inspection for all outbound international packages.
Echoing other Chinese officials, though, Yu again cited "insufficient evidence" to push back at the claim that China is the main source of cheap and deadly synthetic opioids flooding into the United States.
He also confirmed the lack of development in the case of two Chinese nationals indicted by the US Justice Department in October for manufacturing and distributing large quantity of fentanyl and other opiates in the US, calling it an "open case still under investigation."
Public health crisis
Since 1999, the number of American overdose deaths involving opioids has quadrupled. From 2000 to 2015, more than half a million people died of drug overdoses, and opioids account for the majority of those. Recently released numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that around 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016.
Representatives from the US embassy -- as well as diplomats from Europe and Asia Pacific -- attended Thursday's press conference but did not speak.
In a similar event last month, a US official stressed cooperation between the two countries in Washington's war on opioid abuse.
"Once China controls the substances, it has dramatic effects in the United States in terms of lives saved," said Lance Ho, the US Drug Enforcement Administration's country attaché in Beijing. "Once they do that, we see a decrease in the usage in the United States."
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America's health is declining -- and corporations are stoking this crisis (OPINION)
Dec 27, 2017 | CNN
By Jeffrey Sachs
America's powerful corporations made a killing with the passage of the Republican tax cuts. The tax cuts will hand trillions of dollars to the companies and their moneyed owners following a massive corporate lobbying campaign.
Yet the US government announced this month an even graver corporate killing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US life expectancy fell again last year for the second straight year, declining 0.1 year between 2015 and 2016.
And make no mistake -- America's health crisis is the result of greedy corporations and their reckless practices.
The US life expectancy is slipping further and further behind other high-income countries. According to the most recent comparative data of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, US life expectancy in 2015 (at 78.7 years) ranked 27th out of 35 OECD countries, more than five years behind the leader, Japan (83.9 years), and roughly four years behind the next three countries, Spain (83.0), Switzerland (83.0) and Italy (82.6).
Yet Americans pay on average almost $10,000 per person per year for health care -- twice or even three times the cost in Canada and many European countries. So, then, what accounts for America's shorter life span?
One problem is the low value for money in America's healthcare spending. Unlike the highly regulated health systems abroad, America leaves much more of the pricing for drugs, procedures and hospital stays in the hands of the private sector, which exploits its market power by charging outrageous prices and leaving millions of Americans without coverage.
Another cause of America's lagging life expectancy is the nation's rising inequality of income. America's poor die much younger on average than America's rich, with a discrepancy of up to 10-15 years on average. The combination of overpriced American health care and poverty is lethal.
Two corporate-caused US epidemics -- obesity and opioid addictions -- add to the misery.
America's obesity epidemic is shortening the lives of Americans and burdening them with a range of chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, type-II diabetes, hypertension and certain cancers. Obesity is also a risk factor for the onset of depression, while depression, in turn, contributes to the onset of obesity.
America's opioid epidemic is leading to soaring deaths from drug overdoses, and substance abuse more generally is contributing to soaring rates of suicide, addiction and suffering. The CDC calculates that there were 63,600 deaths from drug overdoses in 2016, and more than a tripling in the age-adjusted rate of drug-overdose deaths from 1999 to 2016.
While the obesity and opioid epidemics are sometimes written off as "bad life choices," these epidemics are largely the handiworks of an irresponsible corporate sector. As University of California pediatric endocrinologist and neuroscientist Dr. Robert Lustig describes in his remarkable book, The Hacking of the American Mind, America's soaring obesity reflects a fast-food diet that has been deliberately stuffed with high-fructose corn syrup and various processed meats and grains that cause obesity.
Americans are being killed slowly and painfully by their own food industry. Yet instead of taking responsibility for the epidemic and doing something about it, most of the leaders of the food industry actively resist a change of direction and the needed changes in public-health regulation. The beverage industry, for example, is fighting strenuously against public health measures aimed at cutting America's deadly over-consumption of sugar-packed sodas. Sad to say, things -- human health, for one -- do not go better with soft drinks.
The corporate hidden-hand is also present in the opioid epidemic. A recent expose in the New Yorker and lawsuits filed against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, allege that the company pursued a marketing campaign that pushed OxyContin onto doctors. According to the article, Purdue allegedly did not adequately study the risks of OxyContin, paid off doctors to ignore them and pushed aggressive advertising despite growing concerns and evidence of an addiction crisis. While the company rejects this characterization and denies the allegations, drug makers -- at the very least -- failed to respond adequately to the growing alarm bells as the opioid epidemic soared. (Purdue has since issued a statement saying it is committed to helping in the fight against prescription opioid abuse and to supporting the recommendations of the Food and Drug Administration's Opioid Action Plan.)
Corporate power has run amok in American politics. Yet the mortality crisis is even worse. The health of the American people depends on restoring democratic oversight and regulation over powerful food and drug companies blinded by greed and arrogance.
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Opioid Policy Becomes Personal For One Health Official After Husband's Death
Dec 29, 2017 | NPR All Things Considered
By Sam Gringlas
On a Monday afternoon in October, a panel of Iowa state legislators gathered in the statehouse to discuss the opioid epidemic.
Doctors, law enforcement officials and health insurers all took turns at the lectern.
One of the witnesses was Deborah Thompson.
She's testified in front of state legislators plenty of times. As the legislative liaison for the Iowa Department of Public Health, she's often asked to provide legislators a window into what the epidemic looks like in Iowa. The information can be wonky at times, like how many morphine equivalent milligrams are prescribed each year, or cold facts, like that year's death toll.
Last year in Iowa, there were 80 opioid-related deaths. In 2017, there are projected to be 201.
This time, there was something else she wanted to share.
"Today would have been my seventh wedding anniversary," she told the panel. "My husband, Joe Thompson, passed away from an accidental heroin overdose last September. He left me and his 1-year-old son, Lincoln."
For years, Thompson had worked on policy related to the opioid crisis in Iowa while keeping her own family's struggle with addiction in the background. She'd told a couple of state legislators she had close relationships with, but sharing her story in public was a big moment.
Thompson went back and forth about whether she could keep this to herself. She saw her role as the policy expert working in the background, not a face of a national problem.
"I wasn't really sure I was going to, and I just couldn't shake the fact that it was our wedding anniversary, and that had to mean something," she tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "The coincidence was too great. Joe had always gravitated toward the helping professions, he wanted to be a nurse or a counselor or something like that, and it would be quite an anniversary gift to give him, to be able to, maybe grant that wish through me, if it helped a lot of people. It was probably one of the better gifts I gave him. I was never very good at our anniversary gifts."
Joe Thompson's struggle with opioids started back in 2004. After he was in a serious car accident, Thompson says her husband was likely over-prescribed medication to treat the pain. He started going from doctor to doctor, a practice called doctor shopping, to get new prescriptions or refills. At his job as a package handler for UPS, he started swiping prescription drugs being shipped through the mail.
Joe tried to get help. He enrolled in an outpatient facility. Several times he got sober, sometimes for several years at a time. He even went back to school and got his nursing degree. But then he would relapse again.
"I think it's hard to understand that," Deborah Thompson says. "I think logically your mind can get there, but your heart hurts ... the way the disease manifests itself, it's selfish, things are done to you, money was stolen from me, lies were told to me, and it's hard to wrap your mind around the idea that it's a disease causing this behavior while you're in it."
It took Thompson a while to really grasp that her husband was sick — that his addiction was not just a bad habit he couldn't kick, but a disease that was really hard to climb out from.
"I just kind of equate it to, when my mother had brain cancer, we could see the tumor on the X-ray scans, we knew that something was growing and taking over her brain," she says. "I wish I'd known more about the science when we were in it. ... I felt like I was finally ready to deal with Joe's addiction, and then time ran out."
Joe Thompson died in September 2016 from a heroin overdose. He was 35.
Joe may not have beat his addiction, but Thompson is confident Iowa can.
She says new funding has helped, as well as changes in the law that have given states additional flexibility to respond to the crisis. One policy change that she says could help save lives right now is requiring doctors in every state to check prescription monitoring databases — information that would prevent doctors from prescribing or refilling opioids to people who don't actually need it or are dealing with an addiction. She says waiting for doctors to voluntarily adopt best practices simply isn't enough.
Deborah Thompson is also hoping her unique position at the crossroads of policy and personal experience can help move her state just a little bit closer to curbing the epidemic.
"Just looking at how many community partners that are involved, that run the gamut of law enforcement, the healthcare community, public health professionals, community agencies, coming together in Iowa to fight this, I can't imagine we'll lose," she says.
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Dec 28, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Amanda Erickson
For the second year in a row, life expectancy in the United States has dropped.
It is not hard to understand why: In 2016, there was a 21 percent rise in the number of deaths caused by drug overdoses, with opioids causing two-thirds of them. Last year, the opioid epidemic killed 42,000 people, more than died of AIDS in any year at the height of the crisis.
“We should take it very seriously,” Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told my colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Christopher Ingraham. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up.”
In other words: In no other developed country are people taking and dying from opioids at the rates they are in the United States. We have about 4 percent of the world's population but about 27 percent of the world's drug-overdose deaths.
What explains the discrepancy?
The U.S. medical system.
Americans are prescribed opioids significantly more often than their counterparts in other countries. In the United States, 50,000 opioid doses are taken daily per every million residents. That is nearly 40 percent higher than the rate in Germany and Canada, and double the rate in Austria and Denmark. It is four times higher than in Britain, and six times higher than in France and Portugal. As the BBC put it, “American doctors prescribe — a lot.”
That is in large part a result of our health insurance structure. Unlike countries that provide universal health care funded by state taxes, the United States has a mostly privatized system of care. And experts say insurers are much more likely to pay for a pill than physical therapy or repeat treatments. “Most insurance, especially for poor people, won't pay for anything but a pill,” Judith Feinberg of the West Virginia University School of Medicine told the BBC. “Say you have a patient that's 45 years old. They have lower back pain, you examine them, they have a muscle spasm. Really the best thing is physical therapy, but no one will pay for that. So doctors get very ready to pull out the prescription pad. Even if the insurance covers physical therapy, you probably need prior authorization which is a lot of time and paperwork.”
As a result, Americans were being prescribed opioids. Often, they were given several more pills than they could be expected to use, to avoid repeat visits. “Other countries deal with pain in much healthier ways,” said Feinberg, a professor in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at the WVU School of Medicine.
The U.S. health-care system is different from other countries' in other ways, too. There is pressure to address pain, and a pervasive attitude that everything is fixable. As a result, doctors in the United States are much more likely to provide painkillers than are doctors in other countries. One comparative study found that Japanese doctors treated acute pain with opioids about half the time. In the United States, the number was 97 percent of the time.
“I'm 51,” Professor Keith Humphreys of Stanford University told the BBC. “If I go to an American doctor and say, 'Hey, I ran the marathon I used to run when I was 30, now I'm all sore, fix me,' my doctor will probably try to fix me. If you do that in France the doctor would say, 'It's life, have a glass of wine, what do you want from me?'”
There are other culprits, too. The United States is one of only two countries that allow prescription drug companies to advertise on television. (The other is New Zealand.) The companies do advertise, a lot. In 2016, pharmaceutical companies spent $6.4 billion on advertising. Experts say, too, that U.S. medical schools have not done enough to educate students on pain management, addiction and opioid use and abuse.
Drug companies also try to woo physicians with gifts. Some companies host fancy dinners, and others sponsor conferences and junkets. In 2016, for example, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma spent $7 million on gifts to doctors and teaching hospitals. From 1996 to 2001, the company sponsored 40 national “pain management symposia” in attractive destinations. In the same period, the company doubled its sales force, distributing coupons so doctors could offer patients 30-day supplies of OxyContin and other highly addictive drugs. In those six years, prescriptions for OxyContin jumped from 670,000 to more than 6 million.
That alarmed at least one public-health group, which ran a 2009 bulletin titled, “The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy.”
By then, it was too late.
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Addiction Experts: Drug Crisis May Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Dec 27, 2017 | The Fix
By Kelly Burch
According to experts, the demand for drugs is still growing despite various interventions to curb the crisis.
Many people around the country are wondering when we will hit rock bottom with the opioid crisis, especially after reports have been released indicating that drug-related deaths are increasing more than ever. However, addiction experts say that the crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better.
Donald S. Burke, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, told The Inquirer in a series of interviews about the situation that the opioid crisis reminds him of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
“We as a medical profession and we as a society let the AIDS epidemic go from what was a few thousand to what grew to be close to 100 million cases around the planet,” he said. “And I think we have to realize that we’re on a trajectory that may get a lot worse before it gets better.”
Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management, said that in addition to people with lifelong addictions and the white, rural American population that are often seen as being at risk for opioid overdose, there is another group that goes unnoticed: 40- to 80-year-olds who have been prescribed high-powered opioids for years. Their deaths are often classified as heart disease or infection, without considering the role of opioids, he said.
“No one wants grandma to have died of an overdose,” Kolodny said, adding this is “an addiction epidemic, not a drug abuse problem.”
Caroline Johnson, acting deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, said that deaths in 2017 might not rise as rapidly as they did during 2016. Although that is a sliver of hope, she says it is largely due to the use of the overdose reversal drug Narcan, rather than due to fewer people abusing opioids.
“That is sort of what Narcan is all about,” she said. “We aren’t treating addiction, we are just preventing death.”
Despite the lives being saved by Narcan, synthetic opioids are making drug abuse even more deadly, according to Gary Tuggle, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Philadelphia Division. In one week, the DEA seized 40 kilograms of fentanyl bound for Philadelphia, he said, enough for tens of millions of doses—demand keeps that flow coming.
“We have an insatiable appetite for drugs, both licit and illicit,” Tuggle said. When cartels couldn’t keep up heroin consumption they turned to more powerful synthetics. “Maybe someone figured, ‘We have this demand, we don’t have the product, let’s just use fentanyl.’”
Burke, who worked on the AIDS epidemic, said that despite efforts, medical, social and law enforcement leaders have not figured out how to stem the opioid crisis.
“So far [interventions] don’t seem to be making much difference,” he said.
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Authorities Are Cracking Down on Opioid-Peddling Doctors
Jan 1, 2018 | TIME / AP
By Sadie Gurman
The pain clinic tucked into the corner of a low-slung suburban strip mall was an open secret.
Patients would travel hundreds of miles to see Dr. Andrzej Zielke, eager for what authorities described as a steady flow of prescriptions for the kinds of powerful painkillers that ushered the nation into its worst drug crisis in history.
At least one of Zielke’s patients died of an overdose, and prosecutors say others became so dependent on oxycodone and other opioids they would crowd his office, sometimes sleeping in the waiting room. Some peddled their pills near tumble-down storefronts and on blighted street corners in addiction-plagued parts of Allegheny County, where deaths by drug overdose reached record levels last year.
But Robert Cessar, a longtime federal prosecutor, was unaware of Zielke until Justice Department officials handed him a binder of data that, he said, confirmed what pill-seekers from as far away as Ohio and Virginia already knew. The doctor who offered ozone therapy and herbal pain remedies was also prescribing highly addictive narcotics to patients who didn’t need them, according to an indictment charging him with conspiracy and unlawfully distributing controlled substances.
Zielke denied he was overprescribing, telling AP he practiced alternative medicine and many of his patients stopped seeing him when he cut down on pain pills.
His indictment in October was the first by a nationwide group of federal law enforcement officials that, armed with new access to a broader array of prescription drug databases, Medicaid and Medicare figures, coroners’ records and other numbers compiled by the Justice Department, aims to stop fraudulent doctors faster than before.
The department is providing a trove of data to the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, which draws together authorities in 12 regions across the country, that shows which doctors are prescribing the most, how far patients will travel to see them and whether any have died within 60 days of receiving one of their prescriptions, among other information.
Authorities have been going after co-called “pill mills” for years, but the new approach brings additional federal resources to bear against the escalating epidemic. Where prosecutors would spend months or longer building a case by relying on erratic informants and only limited data, the number-crunching by analysts in Washington provides information they say lets them quickly zero in on a region’s top opioid prescribers.
“This data shines a light we’ve never had before,” Cessar said. “We don’t need to have confidential informants on the street to start a case. Now, we have someone behind a computer screen who is helping us. That has to put (doctors) on notice that we have new tools.”
And Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, told AP the Justice Department will consider going after any law-breaker, even a pharmaceutical company, as it seeks to bring more cases and reduce the number of unwarranted prescriptions.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been in lock-step with President Donald Trump about the need to combat the drug abuse problem that claimed more than 64,000 lives in 2016, a priority that resonates with Trump’s working-class supporters who have seen the ravages of drug abuse first-hand. The president called it a public health emergency, a declaration that allows the government to redirect resources in various ways to fight opioid abuse.
But he directed no new federal money to deal with a scourge that kills nearly 100 people a day, and critics say his efforts fall short of what is needed. The Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t seem eager to put extra money toward the problem.
While the effectiveness of the Trump administration’s broader strategy remains to be seen, the Justice Department’s data-driven effort is one small area where federal prosecutors say they can have an impact.
The data analysis provides clues about who may be breaking the law that are then corroborated with old-fashioned detective work — tips from informants or undercover office visits, said Shawn A. Brokos, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Pittsburgh division. Investigators can also get a sense for where displaced patients will turn next.
Authorities acknowledge there are legitimate reasons for some doctors to prescribe large quantities of opioids, and high prescribing alone doesn’t necessarily trigger extra scrutiny. What raises red flags for investigators are the dentists, psychiatrists and gynecologists who are prescribing at surprisingly high rates.
The effort operates on the long-held perception that drug addiction often starts with prescriptions from doctors and leads to abuse of more dangerous black market drugs like fentanyl, which, for the first time last year, contributed to more overdose deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing pain pills and heroin.
But that focus can cause law-abiding physicians to abandon disabled patients who rely on prescriptions, for fear of being shut down, said University of Alabama addiction researcher Stefan Kertesz. Those patients will turn to harder street drugs or even kill themselves, he said.
“The professional risk for physicians is so high that the natural tendency is to get out of the business of prescription opioids at all,” he said.
Another addiction expert, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, said prosecutors’ emphasis on “drug-dealing doctors” is appropriate but inadequate on its own.
“It’s just not really going to have that much of an impact on an epidemic,” he said. The bigger change will come from a stronger push for prevention and treatment, he said. And, he added, “They should go after the bigger fish…. the legal narcotics distributors and wholesalers who have literally been getting away with mass manslaughter.”
Investigators said Zielke charged $250 a visit and made patients pay in cash. But Zielke said prosecutors unfairly targeted him. Instead of more prosecutions, he said, the government “should promote more alternative therapies,” he said. “And they should find out why so many people have pain.”
A second indictment by the anti-fraud unit involved a cardiologist in Elko, Nevada, accused of routinely providing patients fentanyl and other painkillers they did not need. Justice officials hope to expand the data-driven work nationwide.
Will it work? As Soo Song, who watched addiction warp communities while serving as acting U.S. attorney in western Pennyslvania, put it: “The best measure of success will be if fewer people die.”
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Jan 1, 2018 | LAW360
By Dani Kass / Emily Field
In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation
Attorneys will be closely watching the multidistrict litigation recently formed for the deluge of lawsuits filed by local governments over the opioid epidemic, alleging that makers of opioid pain medication oversold the drugs’ benefits and downplayed their risks while marketing them to doctors.
At least 115 lawsuits are in the MDL, which the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation sent to the Northern District of Ohio in early December. Some suits name the distributors, which the governments say failed to monitor and report suspicious drug orders.
The litigation will keep attorneys occupied for years, and this year will see the MDL start to take shape. In addition to the public entities, there are also pension funds and individual death claims involved in the litigation, and U.S. District Judge Dan A. Polster has indicated he would be open to having three tracks in the MDL for the different types of plaintiffs, said Lexi Hazam of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, which represents plaintiffs in the litigation.
“This is probably the largest litigation we’ve seen in many years,” Hazam said.
The opioid litigation has prompted comparisons the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, but the costs of the opioid crisis go beyond the health care costs incurred by the epidemic, Hazam said.
Local governments are also trying to recoup the costs of rehabilitation programs, emergency foster care services and other related budget strains, Hazam said.
The MDL also differs from other consolidated litigations because a defendant company can’t just settle with one city or county, said Don Migliori of Motley Rice LLC, which also represents plaintiffs in the litigation.
“Once you do that, there’s an infinite number of other claims out there and companies simply can’t sustain infinite, open-ended litigation,” Migliori said. “I think that this is going to be a case that requires a one-shot ending, and it’s going require a lot of creativity to bring all these different interests together and give the defendants finality.”
The case is In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation, case number 1:17-md-2804, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.Opioid Litigation Picking Up
On Dec. 5, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized in the Northern District of Ohio more than 100 suits filed by local governments accusing opioid makers and distributors of creating a national addiction crisis. But that is nowhere near the full extent of this litigation, with more suits having been filed and continually coming in from third-party payors, hospitals and patients.
The drugmakers allegedly marketed their opioids as safe for long-term use, without having proper scientific backing, and downplayed their addiction risks. The claims vary, but largely center on deceptive marketing and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and False Claims Act.
The MDL is Clermont County Board of County Commissioners v. AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. et al., case number 1:17-op-45033, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. -
Dec 29, 2017 | MSNBC (MSNBC)
By National Programming
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590455?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: 2017 comes to a close we're reminded the u.s. is still fighting a drug epidemic. roughly 64,000 overdose deaths in america in 2016. majority of which caused by either natural or synthetic opioids according to the cdc. in another federal report found approximately 11.8 million or 4.4% of the u.s. population abuses opioids in the same time period. frustrated with the growing costs both human and financial from this tragedy, local communities across the country are going to the courts. the national association of counties says more than 100 counties nationwide are suing major pharmaceutical companies for what they perceive to be misleading behavior that caused this crisis. 3:22 PMthe late effort and perhaps most high-profile to do so is cook county, illinois, containing the city of chicago. writing, the county has had to daddy kate significant resources to fight the epidemic causing money to be divertsed from other programs to pay for the substantial costs represented to opioid addiction and abuse. bringing that suit, kim fox, the cook county state's attorney and joins me now. help me understand your decision. why did you decide to do it. seen it elsewhere. why did you decide to get onboard and file suit of your own? >> good afternoon, david. first and foremost, as you mention, the opioid crisis has a staggering human cost. we saw in cook county over a two-year period a 70% increase in opioid-related deaths here. in addition, we have the third largest health and hospital system in the country. public health and hospital system. where we saw last year alone over 5,000 folks who come 3:23 PMthrough our emergency rooms with opioid-related ims llnesses and have a large jail seeing people coming in and out of our jails dealing with opioidaddictions and the social consequences that come with that. folks engaging in activities to help feed this addiction. there is an economic cost to the people who live here in cook county and truly a staggering human cost where we felt we needed to intervene. >> can you put a number on it? what are the damp ares you're seeking in light of how much this is icing weighing on the county's finances? >> we have not put a specified number on it. i can tell you the cost to tax pacer here is rather staggering. again, taxpayers dollars for our publicly funded health and hospital system to our jails, to the loss of wages, to really community and public safety for those who live in communities that have been impacted by opioids, and so we've not put an actual dollar amount to that but i can tell you it's rather significant. >> how worried are you focusing 3:24 PMon the pharmaceutical companies, people focus on them rather than the doctors who have given pharmaceutical prescriptions to others? are you worried you're narrowing the focus too much here? >> i don't think so. we have to make sure we're all compensated in dealing with this crises and risk making sure we're not holding those responsible by focusing on one issue. going after pharmaceutical companies who profited from this influx of use or prescription of opioids, advertising them in ways they shouldn't be used knowing they're addictive qualities, fligs addition to th illicitly trading in these prescription drugs is important and we can make sure we hold everybody accountable but want to make sure those profiting extensively off of this epidemic are held to account. >> how much comparison should we draw with what happened to big tobacco a couple decades ago? is the same playbook being yeesed here? >> i think it sets the example. we saw over the course of several years, several decades, what was happening with folks using tobacco. the industry not acknowledging the impact, the addictive qualities of tobacco. the harm that tobacco can do. and the recognition over time, the significant loss of life because of tobacco, and knowing what would have happened if we intervened earlier. what we've seen with the opioid crisis is a sudden spike over the course of the last ten years or so and i think we're right now at ground zero and could have a significant impactened don't have to wait years or decades to do something. >> states attorney for cook county, illinois. thank you for your time.
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Dec 29, 2017 | WLOV (FOX)
By Columbus, MS
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590413?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: he recently-filed"first-of- its-kind" opioid lawsuits filed by hospitals in mississippi and alabama continue to grow. it started as a simple class- action suit filed in mississippi but has has now been swept up into a national tide of litigation which has now been consolidated. the suit... which now includes more than 10 states...alleges that drug makers aggressively pushed the highly addictive, dangerous opioids...turning patients into drug addicts for their own corporate profit. about 20 compaes are named as defendants...incl uding oxycontin creator purdue pharma and johnson johnson.
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Dec 29, 2017 | WQAD (ABC)
By Davenport, IA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590421?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: scott county leaders made a decision yesterday... to join several other counties across the u-s -- in a federal lawsuit aimed at opioid manufacturers. johnson and johnson, purdue pharma, and abbott laboratories are a few of the companies mentioned in the complaint. it accuses them of causing harm in marketing and over-prescribing painkillers. the lawsuit seeks compensation for the millions of dollars it costs to treat the epidemic. more than 18 counties in iowa -- including cedar and clinton county have voted in support of the lawsuit. illinois and wisconsin are also a part of the suit.
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Dec 29, 2017 | CLTV (CLTV)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590432?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: democrafinger at pharmaceutical companies for the ongoing opioid epidemic. they've now filed a lawsuit against those giant companies. johnson andjohnson, purdue pharma, and abbott laboratories are a few of the companies mentioned in the complaint. it accuses them of causing harm in marketing and prescribing painkillers. the lawsuit wants the millions of dollars cook county says it spent to treat the epidemic. several other chicago area counties have filed similar lawsuits.
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Dec 28, 2017 | WUSA (CBS)
By Washington D.C.
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590459?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: In the meantime, prince georges county is looking at a possible lawsuit against the company that manufactures prescription opioid drugs. a spokesperson for county executive baker says they hired a law firm to explore the idea. opioid overdoses killed more than 60 people in the county in the first six months of 2017.
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Dec 28, 2017 | KRIV (FOX)
By Houston, TX
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590671?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: n health watch, the opioid epidemic in america is getting even worse. new numbers from the cdc show opioid overdoses killed more than 42,000 americans last year. that's a 28% jump from 2015. >>> sometimes these overdoses are a result of the drug not being locked away. local public health leaders are trying to prevent that from happening. here to explain is a doctor with harris county public health with the founder of walk med. thank you for being here. this is a very serious problem, isn't it? >> yes. it is. very serious problem. melissa: where are they getting these drugs? 9:35 AM>> we know about 50% of people who -- among young adults and adolescents who use or misuse prescription drugs definitely get them from friends and relatives. melissa: it's somebody they know and it's readily accessible. we need to make it not ready accessible? >> correct. correct. the work we do at harris county public health with our north harris county substance abuse prevention coalition targets young adults and youth and try to prevent -- try to increase political awareness about -- public awareness about the dangers of underage drug abuse and alcohol abuse. melissa: we need to keep it away from anybody besides the person taking it. you have a suggestion of a lock box that's just that. it has a lock on it. you're having a giveaway today. talk about the importance of this and what lock medici is. >> thank you for having us this morning. you know, there's data coming 9:36 AMout showing that a lot of the teens were abusing opioids aren't getting it from friends and family at home. so it's more important than ever to keep thinking about are we safeguarding our medications or not? and so we at lock med basically have products to do just that. we have universal lock boxes such as these and -- we're giving away today to safeguard all kinds of medications. as you know, more and more meds are coming in the house. we're having multigenerational families together, holiday times. people are getting together. we're ordering three month supplies. we're havingore meds in the house. it's important to think about are we safeguarding our medications in the home? melissa: they're so highly addictive. isn't it easy for someone to take a little of the drug and then they're stuck on it and here goes the problem? 9:37 AM>> that's correct. that's why we want to emphasize the message of prevention so we can reduce the accessibility and reduce the addiction potential and the misuse potential of the drugs. melissa: this is a good time when families see these numbers and how big the problem is and how many people are dying from it, that it is time to start talking to our teenagers more and saying this is a deadly problem. this is something you don't experiment with and play around with. >> that's right. that's one of the aims of the coalition, the north harris county substance abuse prevention, one of our other aims is to empower parents to be proactive and talk to their children about this issue. melissa: the giveaway is today. where can they get ahold of a medical lock box? >> the event is today at the harris county public library, the aldine branch. we'll be there from 12:00 to 3:00. we'll be giving out information on other medical conditions as well as disposal bags. we know that once people get prescribed certain medications and we have medications that may remain, we definitely want to not only talk about safe storage methods, we want to talk about safe disposal methods. so we have some disposal materials as well that we'll be giving away. melissa: that's huge. that's one of the reasons people have a stockpile of medications. they can't flush them. they're not supposed to throw it away, so it builds up in the house and sits there waiting for somebody to try to get their hands on it. >> that's right. melissa: what do you suggest people do with those who can't go today? >> we have some social media links on how to get in touch with us. we have other community vendors in town that also have storage containers or disposal methods as well. melissa: very good information from you both. thanks so much for being here. hopefully it's just a thought that people will do and something else they'll add to the medicine cabinet. seems like it might be the most important thing in there. good to see you both.
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Dec 28, 2017 | WMAQ (NBC)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590674?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: cook county is joining in the war against the opioid epidemic. yesterday the county filed a lawsuit against several of the country's largest pharmaceutical companies. it comes a week after five suburban counties filed similar lawsuits.
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Dec 27, 2017 | WGN
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590437?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: cook county takeials want to several major pharmaceutical companies court order opioid they are. filing that lawsuit this johnson and johnson, perdue and are of view of the companies mentioned the complaint. it accuses them of causing in marketing in they seek compensation millions of dollars cost to treat the cook county now joins several other counties who have filed amilar lawsts.
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Dec 27, 2017 | WTTW (PBS)
By Chicago, IL
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590434?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: a new fight in the front on opioid addiction. amanda vinicky has that and more. >> cook county is suing abbott laboratories and johnson & johnsonand drug manufacturers accusing the companies of causing the opioid crisis through aggressive marketing of prescription pain-killers. last year more deaths with attributable to 0 opioid overdoses to gunshots and car accidents combined. and the cook county medical examiner aoffice documented 847 opioid-related deaths. dupage, filed similar lawsuits last week.
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Channel 2 Action News at 6:00AM
Jan 26, 2018 | WSB (ABC)
By Atlanta, GA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590684?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: we have a better idea of the county recouping taxpayer money to fight against opioid abuse and in a lawsuit filed last week, the county says drugmakers, distributors and others have deceived the public on the dangers of opioid use. >> distributors, specifically, allege regulations and the dea which sought to limit the delivery of those medications when done in suspicious amounts. >> counties have filed a lawsuit or started the process.
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Jan 23, 2018 | WMUR (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590687?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: the city of nashua filed a lawsuit against more than two dozen drug makers, saying corporate greed contributed to the national opioid crisis. the list of 25 defendants includes purdue pharma lp. sued by the city of manchester. the saying that they lied about the effects of opioids. it could not comment on pending litigation, but say they're working on various agencies to work on nonopioid pain medications.
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NewsCenter 5 Weekend EyeOpener
Dec 23, 2017 | WCVB (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31590690?token=d6c4ed56-27ae-4e32-8471-dc1fe49b2689
Rough Transcript: nashua has filed a lawsuit against more than a dozen drug makers. the city says corporate greed contributed to the national opioid crisis. the list of 25 defendants includes purdue pharma. that company is being sued by the city of manchester and the state of new hampshire. the suit claims the companies used misleading marketing methods and knowingly lied about the long-term effects of opioids.
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