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Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report - 3/22/18
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Ark. Sues Drugmakers, Distributors Over Opioid Epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | Law360
By Rachel Graf
Arkansas has hit dozens of drugmakers and distributors, including Purdue Pharma Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. and McKesson Corporation, with a suit in state court over the companies’ alleged role in the opioid epidemic, joining a growing number of states and municipalities that have brought similar allegations. -
State, cities, counties sue opioid makers, suppliers
Mar 22, 2018 | Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette (AR)
By Amanda Claire Curcio
The state and a coalition of 87 Arkansas counties and cities are suing the makers and distributors of addictive painkillers for their role in the opioid epidemic. -
Arkansas cities, counties sue drug makers over opioid crisis
Mar 21, 2018 | Associated Press
By Andrew DeMillo
A coalition of cities and counties around Arkansas announced Wednesday it had sued dozens of makers and distributors of opioids, arguing that the companies should bear the cost of drug abuse in the state. -
Arkansas counties and cities announce joint lawsuit against opioid makers and distributors
Mar 21, 2018 | KATV (AR)
By Nick Popham
In Arkansas, there has roughly been a 250 percent increase of fatal overdoses over the last 18 years. -
Attorney General Sessions Issues Memo to U.S. Attorneys on the Use of Capital Punishment in Drug-Related Prosecutions (Press Release)
Mar 21, 2018 | DOJ
Today Attorney General Sessions issued the following memo to U.S. Attorneys providing guidance regarding the use of capital punishment in drug-related prosecutions: -
Sessions Memo Backs Death Penalty In Opioid Cases
Mar 21, 2018 | Law360
By Jeff Overley
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday released a memo directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in “appropriate cases” involving drug trafficking, a move urged by President Donald Trump to combat the opioid crisis. -
Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here’s what would actually work. (Opinion)
Mar 21, 2018 | Washington Post
By Editorial Board
THE OPIOID crisis is a complicated problem, for which President Trump offered his usual simplistic approach Monday. His comments emphasized force and punishment, including, as expected, the death penalty for drug traffickers — as well as an attempt to link the drug crisis to immigration by blaming it on “sanctuary cities” supposedly swarming with foreign drug dealers. He offered no new funding for drug treatment beyond the welcome but still inadequate $6 billion two-year program moving through Congress, though to his credit he recommended repeal of a 1970s-era law that prevents Medicaid from paying for care at large inpatient facilities. -
Ill. Man Says Insys Rep's Lies Got Him Hooked On Opioids
Mar 21, 2018 | Law360
By Dani Kass
An Illinois resident became addicted to Insys Therapeutics Inc.’s opioid painkiller Subsys after a sales representative touted the drug without mentioning its risks and the company got the prescription cleared by falsely telling his health plan that he had cancer, according to a federal suit filed Wednesday. -
Congress to boost opioid treatment, prevention dollars
Mar 21, 2018 | The Hill
By Rachel Roubein
Congress is adding a several billion dollar boost to the omnibus in order to combat the opioid epidemic — an effort to bolster prevention, treatment and law enforcement initiatives to combat the crisis killing thousands of people each year. -
Congress is hyping up its opioid bills. But there’s not much to hype. (Opinion)
Mar 21, 2018 | Vox
By German Lopez
If you hear members of Congress tell it, this is really the moment that federal lawmakers are taking the opioid epidemic seriously. Over the next two days, the House is holding hearings on more than 20 bills to confront the opioid crisis — which Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), who’s overseeing the hearings, described as “really digging in so we can deliver relief for those devastated by this crisis.” -
Pharma's doctor payments a troubling connection (Opinion)
Mar 22, 2018 | Williamson Daily News (WV)
By Staff
As a magnifying glass continues to be held over the far-reaching opioid epidemic, it becomes easier to see the red flags that preceded the now-ubiquitous problem. -
State prosecutors, TN AG battle over authority to sue Big Pharma in continuing opioids epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | Knox News (TN)
By Dave Boucher & Jamie Satterfield
With the death toll rising and the flow of opiates from Big Pharma unabated, state prosecutors and the Tennessee Attorney General’s office are locked in a legal battle for power and money. -
Mayor Ganim, Sen. Blumenthal Call For Feds To Act On Opioids
Mar 21, 2018 | Bridgeport Patch (CT)
By Alfred Branch
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim and United States Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are teaming up with Dr. Lee Forest of the Fairfield County Medical Association to call on the U.S. Justice Department to step up the fight against opioid addiction. -
Lawsuit filed in opioid case
Mar 22, 2018 | The Moulton Advertiser (AL)
By John David Palmer
A hefty 174-page lawsuit has been filed against multiple pharmaceutical companies in which The City of Moulton is listed as a plaintiff, according to local attorney Mark Dutton. -
MACON-BIBB COUNTY TO SUE DRUG COMPANIES THAT MAKE, SELL OPIOIDS
Mar 22, 2018 | WMGT (GA)
By Edna Ruiz
Macon-Bibb County is filing a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies that make and distribute opioids. -
Manatee Co. joins City of Sarasota in suing drug companies over opioid epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | WTSP (FL)
By Isabel Mascarenas
The fight against the opioid epidemic is heading to the courtroom. -
McCormick County considers joining counties suing regarding opioid crisis
Mar 21, 2018 | Index County (SC)
By Conor Hughes
More than 20 South Carolina counties are suing members of the pharmaceutical industry for damages relating to the opioid crisis and more are considering joining their ranks. -
Watauga County Agrees to Join 26 Other North Carolina Counties in Opioid Lawsuit
Mar 21, 2018 | High Country Press (NC)
By Nathan Ham
Opioid abuse is a problem in so many towns and counties, not just in North Carolina, but in every state around the country. -
City of Kent to sue opioid companies for deceptive practices
Mar 21, 2018 | Kent Reporter (WA)
By Steve Hunter
The Kent City Council unanimously agreed to join hundreds of other cities across the nation to sue opioid manufacturers and distributors for deceptive marketing practices. -
City of Kent suing opioid manufacturers and marketers
Mar 21, 2018 | Business Examiner
By Staff
Cities all over the United States have felt the effects of opioid addiction. Kent is among the cities hard hit by the epidemic. On March 20, Kent Mayor Dana Ralph and the Kent City Council authorized the filing of a lawsuit against manufacturers and marketers of prescription opioids in the U.S. -
Opioid lawsuit preparation continues
Mar 22, 2018 | Peninsula Daily News (WA)
By Jesse Major
Work on preparing Clallam County’s lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors is still underway as a federal judge looks at settling more than 400 similar lawsuits from cities, counties and tribes across the nation within the year. -
County Mulls Local Law Calling Opioid Epidemic ‘Public Nuisance’
Mar 22, 2018 | The Post Journal (NY)
By Katrina Fuller
A local law declaring the opioid epidemic and its effects a “public nuisance” will go before the full County Legislature next week. -
Marshfield joins class action suit against opioid manufacturers
Mar 21, 2018 | Wicked Local Marshfield (MA)
By James Kukstis
Throughout the country, communities are coping with the devastating effects being wrought by the current opioid crisis, and now Marshfield is joining more than 70 other communities in Massachusetts to try and hold someone responsible. -
Summit County files lawsuit against Big Pharma for alleged role in opioid crisis
Mar 22, 2018 | Park Record (UT)
By Angelique McNaughton
Summit County became the first county in Utah on Tuesday to file a lawsuit against some of the country's largest opioid manufacturers and distributors, claiming deceptive and misleading marketing campaigns have led to the national opioid epidemic. -
County Board endorses joining multi-county opioid suit
Mar 21, 2018 | Kendall County Now (IL)
By Tony Scott
Kendall County Board members endorsed joining a multi-county lawsuit against opioid manufacturers during a recent committee meeting. -
Bloomberg Big Decisions
Mar 22, 2018 | National Programming
By BLOOM (Bloomberg)
Video Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-03-22/bloomberg-big-decisions-johnson-johnson-ceo-alex-gorsky-video -
On the Issues
Mar 22, 2018 | National Programming
By PCN (PCN)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742382?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e -
THV11 News at 10
Mar 21, 2018 | Little Rock, AR
By KTHV (CBS)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742377?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e -
Daybreak - Early
Mar 22, 2018 | Little Rock, AR
By KATV (ABC)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742387?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e -
News 5 Today at 5
Mar 22, 2018 | Tri-Cities (TN-VA), VA
By WCYB (NBC)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742388?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e
Arkansas Suits
Commentary and FYIs
Southeast (AL, GA, FL, SC, NC)
Northwest (WA)
Northeast (NY, MA)
West (UT)
Midwest (IL)
Broadcast Media Coverage
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Ark. Sues Drugmakers, Distributors Over Opioid Epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | Law360
By Rachel Graf
Arkansas has hit dozens of drugmakers and distributors, including Purdue Pharma Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. and McKesson Corporation, with a suit in state court over the companies’ alleged role in the opioid epidemic, joining a growing number of states and municipalities that have brought similar allegations.
Drugmakers and distributors have increased the availability of opioids in the state by downplaying the risks of the drugs and failing to temper the oversupply of pills, respectively, according to an amended complaint filed Monday. The number of fatal overdoses each year in Arkansas has almost tripled between 2000 and 2015 to more than 400, while opioid sales have quadrupled during the same period, according to the suit, which includes 72 counties and 210 cities.
“Though other lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country, Arkansas is the only state that has united in this fashion,” Chris Villines, executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties, said in a statement. “Instead of fighting and competing with each other on critically needed settlement dollars for our cities and counties, all of the cities and counties are working together to do what’s best for Arkansas.”
The suit alleges that the opioid epidemic has been fueled largely by overprescription and oversupply of the drugs, saying many people who are now dependent on opioids were prescribed the drugs to treat chronic, noncancer pain. The treatments were initially developed to treat only short-term, acute pain because they were considered too addictive to treat more common types of pain, according to the suit.
Drugmakers nonetheless began a marketing campaign in the 1990s that overstated the drugs’ benefits and downplayed their risks, according to the suit.
“While manufacturer defendants ignited the fires of the opioid epidemic, the distributor defendants fanned the flames,” the suit said.
The distributors, including McKesson, Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corporation, neglected to ensure that opioids weren’t being diverted from legitimate uses to illegitimate uses, according to the complaint. The distributors didn’t visit Arkansas pharmacies to conduct due diligence and check whether the drugs were being diverted, the state alleged.
“It was reasonably foreseeable to the distributor defendants that their conduct in flooding the market in and around Arkansas with highly addictive opioids would allow opioids to fall into the hands of children, addicts, criminals and other unintended users,” the suit said.
Arkansas is among the 20 states with the highest amount of opioid abuse for each age group, and it is the state with the highest amount of misuse of painkillers among children between 12 and 17 years old, according to the complaint. The suit alleges that drugmakers sell enough opioids for each of the state's residents to take 80 pills per year.
The plaintiffs are represented by Mike Rainwater of Rainwater Holt & Sexton, Brian D. Reddick of Reddick Moss PLLC, James C. Wyly and Sean F. Rommel of Wyly-Rommel PLLC, Colin Jorgensen of the Association of Arkansas Counties, Mark R. Hayes and John L. Wilkerson of the Arkansas Municipal League and Ernest Cory, F. Jerome Tapley, Hirlye R. “Ryan” Lutz III, Adam W. Pittman and Brett C. Thompson.
Counsel information for the drugmakers was not available Wednesday.
The suit is the state of Arkansas et al. v. Purdue Pharma LP et al., case number CV-2018-268, in the Crittenden County Circuit Court. -
State, cities, counties sue opioid makers, suppliers
Mar 22, 2018 | Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette (AR)
By Amanda Claire Curcio
The state and a coalition of 87 Arkansas counties and cities are suing the makers and distributors of addictive painkillers for their role in the opioid epidemic.
The complaint, filed Monday in Crittenden County Circuit Court, includes 72 of 75 counties and 15 cities, including Little Rock, Fort Smith, Jonesboro, Bentonville, Springdale, Hot Springs and Pine Bluff.
The suit alleges that drug manufacturers exaggerated the benefits of opioid use for chronic pain and concealed the narcotics' long-term side effects. Defendants also include distributors, retailers and a handful of Arkansas doctors and pharmacists who the suit claims are complicit in the misuse of prescription opioids.
Attorneys involved in the case said that an additional 195 cities have "signed on" to the litigation and "will become plaintiffs in a case ... somehow." They didn't say when that would happen.
The suit is separate from a federal lawsuit filed by the Association of Arkansas Counties in December. That case is now part of a larger effort called the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, formed to combine at least 64 separate suits. The group litigation was transferred to the Northern District of Ohio.
Any potential money from the newly filed lawsuit in Arkansas -- which mostly targets Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson and 50 other opioid manufacturers -- will pay for costs connected to the public health problem, attorneys said.
State and local officials attribute Arkansas' opioid use to an increase in emergency room visits, first-responders' use of expensive overdose-reversal drugs on opioid victims, longer hospital stays for opioid-addicted newborns, treatment facility admissions and crime.
"Our community is inundated. ... The time for change is now," Trumann Police Chief Chad Henson said at a Wednesday news conference. "This is the step in the right direction to getting the resources we need to fight the epidemic."
There are more opioid prescriptions than people in Arkansas -- over 114 scripts dispensed for every 100 residents, according to 2016 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures.
The state's prescription rate is second only to Alabama, which has 121 scripts to 100 residents.
Dozens of other officers and local leaders attended Wednesday's conference, which announced the joint effort by the state, cities and counties to get the opioid industry to "clean up its mess."
Every official who spoke at the conference linked the state's prescription opioid use to increased heroin overdose deaths and expressed worries about a looming heroin crisis. Police say heroin is cheaper and more readily available than prescription opioids.
"I've seen more heroin [overdose deaths] in the last two years than in the last 28 combined," said Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery.
Montgomery also said there weren't enough existing drug treatment options for addicts. He encouraged those affected to "share their stories" with local officials.
"Help us eventually save lives," he added.
State records show officers saved 62 lives using naloxone, an overdose-reversal drug, since December 2016. Police across Arkansas have been equipped with nearly 55,000 kits of the drug; each kit costs between $75 and $100.
Kirk Lane, the state's drug director, said he plans to offer naloxone to high schools.
The 141-page lawsuit alleges that the opioid industry encouraged doctors to prescribe more painkillers, even when patients exhibited signs of addiction, and that companies also paid certain physicians to promote opioids to their colleagues.
Distributors, the court document also asserted, "ensured that opioid supplies abound in Arkansas and have made it one of the [most] well-stocked states in the country."
The Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents some companies listed in the suit, sent the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette a response to the claims listed in the December suit filed by the county association.
Opioid distributors "understand the tragic impact the opioid epidemic has on communities across the country" and are "deeply engaged in the issue and are taking steps to be part of the solution," Jill Courtney, a spokesman for the national trade association, said then.
"The idea that distributors are solely responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and how it is regulated," she said in an email.
The complaint also listed a handful of in-state physicians, retailers and pharmacists, previously charged with criminal participation in "opioid diversion schemes." Another defendant is Linden Care, a "concierge pharmacy service" that delivered fentanyl, an opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, to Arkansas residents.
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Arkansas cities, counties sue drug makers over opioid crisis
Mar 21, 2018 | Associated Press
By Andrew DeMillo
A coalition of cities and counties around Arkansas announced Wednesday it had sued dozens of makers and distributors of opioids, arguing that the companies should bear the cost of drug abuse in the state.
The Association of Arkansas Counties and the Arkansas Municipal League announced that 72 counties and 15 cities along with the state filed a lawsuit last week in Crittenden County Circuit Court against the drug firms. The lawsuit names 65 defendants, including several retailers, pharmacist and physicians. In addition to the cities named as plaintiffs, attorneys said 195 other cities have signed agreements supporting the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses drug manufacturers of using deceptive statements to market opioids and failing to disclose the known risks of long-term opioid abuse. The lawsuit doesn't specify how much is being sought, but asks that damages be awarded to cover past costs the local governments have incurred as well as future needs such as treatment clinics and hiring additional patrol officers.
"Despite the best efforts of the state, counties and cities, through an allocation of all available resources, the Arkansas opioid epidemic continues to infect Arkansas," the lawsuit said. "Absent the relief sought in this action, the resources of the state, counties and cities will continue to be inadequate to respond to the epidemic."
Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., one of the companies named in the suit, defended its marketing and promotion of its drugs as "appropriate and responsible."
"The labels for our prescription opioid pain medicines provide information about their risks and benefits, and the allegations made against our company are baseless and unsubstantiated," Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email. "In fact, our medications have some of the lowest rates of abuse among this class of medications."
Hundreds of communities around the U.S. have filed similar lawsuits over the opioid crisis. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge earlier this year retained five law firms to help investigate drug companies, and a spokeswoman said Rutledge was close to taking action on behalf of the state.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year said Arkansas had the second highest opioid prescription rate in country, with 114.6 prescriptions written for every 100 residents in the state.
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Arkansas counties and cities announce joint lawsuit against opioid makers and distributors
Mar 21, 2018 | KATV (AR)
By Nick Popham
In Arkansas, there has roughly been a 250 percent increase of fatal overdoses over the last 18 years.
This epidemic has caused nearly every county in the natural state to act.
Arkansas is one of the leading states in the U.S. in opioid prescriptions and misusage.
"We're at the forefront of a national epidemic," Don Zimmerman, executive director of the Arkansas Municipal League, said.
With opioids affecting communities across the Natural State, some leaders and legal analysts met about five months ago with the idea of trying to find a way to combat this growing issue.
"The real message is what can we do about this epidemic," Mark Stodola, Mayor of Little Rock, said.
Nearly half a year of work resulted in the group, Opioid Justice for a United Arkansas, to file a lawsuit against companies they say are responsible for this epidemic.
On the capitol steps, with members of law enforcement from around Arkansas standing in support, city and government leaders shared their support of this legal action.
"The over prescribing and the misinformed prescribing is directly related to bad information provided by our prescribers about the safety of opioids themselves," Kirk Lane, drug director of Arkansas, said.
"If this lawsuit is successful, the people that caused it will be helping to solve it," Zimmerman said.
Lane says he hopes this will make the much-needed difference.
"If we fail, we'll be the first generation that has not left a better place for the next generation," said Lane.
The lawsuit is filed against over 50 drug manufacturers, and a handful of distributers, pharmacists and retailers.
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Mar 21, 2018 | DOJ
Today Attorney General Sessions issued the following memo to U.S. Attorneys providing guidance regarding the use of capital punishment in drug-related prosecutions:
"The opioid epidemic has inflicted an unprecedented toll of addiction, suffering, and death on communities throughout our nation. Drug overdoses, including overdoses caused by the lethal substance fentanyl and its analogues, killed more than 64,000 Americans in 2016 and now rank as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. In the face of all of this death, we cannot continue with business as usual.
"Drug traffickers, transnational criminal organizations, and violent street gangs all contribute substantially to this scourge. To combat this deadly epidemic, federal prosecutors must consider every lawful tool at their disposal. This includes designating an opioid coordinator in every district, fully utilizing the data analysis of the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, as well as using criminal and civil remedies available under federal law to hold opioid manufacturers and distributors accountable for unlawful practices.
"In addition, this should also include the pursuit of capital punishment in appropriate cases. Congress has passed several statutes that provide the Department with the ability to seek capital punishment for certain drug-related crimes. Among these are statutes that punish certain racketeering activities (18 U.S.C. § 1959); the use of a firearm resulting in death during a drug trafficking crime (18 U.S.C. § 924(j)); murder in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise (21 U.S.C. § 848(e)); and dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs (18 U.S.C. § 3591(b)(1)). I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes, when appropriate, to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes in our nation."
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Sessions Memo Backs Death Penalty In Opioid Cases
Mar 21, 2018 | Law360
By Jeff Overley
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday released a memo directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in “appropriate cases” involving drug trafficking, a move urged by President Donald Trump to combat the opioid crisis.
The memo follows a speech Monday in which Trump endorsed capital punishment for drug traffickers as part of the administration’s broader plan for easing the opioid crisis. In his memo, Sessions noted that 64,000 Americans in 2016 died of drug overdoses, two-thirds of which involved an opioid.
“In the face of all of this death, we cannot continue with business as usual,” Sessions wrote.
The memo advised prosecutors to consider using existing authority under four statutes to seek the death penalty in drug cases. Most of those statutes authorize capital punishment only for killings that relate to drug trafficking. But one of them specifically allows the death penalty for selling extremely large quantities of drugs, including 60 or more kilograms of heroin.
“I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes, when appropriate, to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes in our nation,” the attorney general wrote.
Trump has described capital punishment as entirely appropriate for major drug traffickers, arguing that they are responsible for many more lost lives than the typical murderer who receives the death penalty. But he acknowledged on Monday that the idea is controversial, saying, “Maybe our country’s not ready for that.”
Critics have argued that it would be unconstitutional to execute someone solely for selling drugs, even in large amounts. But the question has not been tested much in the courts, mainly because the death penalty has rarely if ever been sought in such cases.
Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 struck down as unconstitutional a Louisiana statute that authorized the death penalty for child rape. In doing so, the high court specifically declined to opine on whether other crimes not involving murder — including drug trafficking — could be punished with death.
“Our concern here is limited to crimes against individual persons. We do not address, for example, crimes defining and punishing treason, espionage, terrorism and drug kingpin activity, which are offenses against the state,” the Supreme Court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana. "As it relates to crimes against individuals, though, the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken."
In his memo Wednesday, Sessions noted that the U.S. Department of Justice in recent months has taken several other steps to strengthen its approach to the opioid crisis, including the creation of a special unit devoted to opioid fraud and abuse. -
Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here’s what would actually work. (Opinion)
Mar 21, 2018 | Washington Post
By Editorial Board
THE OPIOID crisis is a complicated problem, for which President Trump offered his usual simplistic approach Monday. His comments emphasized force and punishment, including, as expected, the death penalty for drug traffickers — as well as an attempt to link the drug crisis to immigration by blaming it on “sanctuary cities” supposedly swarming with foreign drug dealers. He offered no new funding for drug treatment beyond the welcome but still inadequate $6 billion two-year program moving through Congress, though to his credit he recommended repeal of a 1970s-era law that prevents Medicaid from paying for care at large inpatient facilities.
One reason the president’s rhetoric was so inappropriate is that the drugs at issue are not all illegal. Illicit heroin and fentanyl use has indeed surged in the past half-decade; those two drugs account for the lion’s share of the 64,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, if you eliminated them all, the country would still have a massive problem. The epidemic began two decades ago with legally prescribed opioid analgesics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. And those drugs caused more than 17,000 overdose deaths in 2016.
The good news is that government, the medical community and patients are learning the lessons of unwise past prescription practices, especially the widespread use of opioids for chronic, non-cancer pain. In more recent years, opioid prescribing has begun to decline, from the all-time peak of 782 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) per capita in 2010 to 640 MME per capita in 2015, according to a July 2017 CDC report. That’s an 18-percent decline, which has almost certainly continued, or even accelerated, especially since the CDC published new, more cautious opioid prescribing guidelines in 2016.
Predictably, there is now a backlash to the backlash: Advocates for pain patients decry the lack of access to opioids and say they are being made to suffer for the mistakes of others. Such concerns need to be taken seriously — opioids must remain available for cancer pain and other clear palliative needs.
Yet these complaints also need to be kept in perspective. Data show wide geographic discrepancies in rates of opioid prescribing (poor, rural counties have higher rates than urban ones), which suggests that objective medical considerations are not the only reason for heavy usage where it occurs. Indeed, the latest research shows that opioids are not the most effective treatment for common forms of non-cancer pain. Quite often, they have been dispensed precisely because more effective alternatives — physical therapy, for example — were not available.
Even after recent reductions, doctors in the United States still prescribe legal opioids at three times the 1999 rate. If doctors met the goal Mr. Trump set in his speech — a one-third reduction in opioid prescriptions by 2021 — they would still be prescribing at double the 1999 rate. And the United States would still be administering legal opioids far more frequently than its peer nations in the industrialized world. This country prescribes opioid pain medicines twice as frequently as Germany does, but as bitter experience has taught, that doesn’t make us twice as good at treating pain.
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Ill. Man Says Insys Rep's Lies Got Him Hooked On Opioids
Mar 21, 2018 | Law360
By Dani Kass
An Illinois resident became addicted to Insys Therapeutics Inc.’s opioid painkiller Subsys after a sales representative touted the drug without mentioning its risks and the company got the prescription cleared by falsely telling his health plan that he had cancer, according to a federal suit filed Wednesday.
William Hemmings said he started taking Subsys in 2015 –– to treat pain from a work-related injury and subsequent surgeries –– based on the word of sales representative Nick Patel, who had been in Hemmings’ doctor's office. Patel then continued to supply Hemmings with the drug, at no point warning him that the drug was highly addictive and actively discouraging him from coming off it, the suit says.
“At no time during any of those communications between Mr. Hemmings and Mr. Patel did Mr. Patel ever mention that Subsys was highly addictive or even potentially addictive; that Subsys was not suitable for long-term use; that there were risks associated with the use of Subsys; or that he was being paid by Insys to increase quantity and dosages,” the suit states.
Hemmings’ doctor was originally treating him with “various narcotics and muscle relaxers,” but suggested Subsys in April 2015, following a visit by Insys sales representatives, the complaint states. When Hemmings said he was interested in trying the drug, Patel came in to the office. Patel described Subsys as a spray that provided pain relief in about five minutes and could be taken multiple times a day, adding that Hemmings was a “perfect candidate,” according to the suit.
After trying Subsys, Hemmings said he wasn’t getting the desired relief, so Patel said to contact him directly for additional shipments, the suit claims. Then, “on a regular basis in 2016 and 2017,” Hemmings contacted Patel and was sent more Subsys at home, according to the complaint.
At some point, Hemmings says he became addicted, leading to mood swings, depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, hallucinations, impulsive behavior, antisocial behavior and sleeping problems, among a host of other issues. At no point during this did Patel suggest that Hemmings should take less of the drug or come off it completely, explicitly telling him not to reduce his intake or discontinue taking it, the complaint states.
Hemmings says that if he had known the drug was “highly addictive or even potentially addictive” and that it wasn’t supposed to be used long term, he wouldn't have tried it.
In 2017, Hemmings found out that Insys had contacted his health plan's pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, and told them he had cancer in order to make sure the drug got approved. Insys is only approved for patients with breakthrough cancer pain who are tolerant of other opioids.
Hemmings’ doctor took him off the drug in August, after finding out that the company was accused of a criminal scheme to increase prescriptions through kickbacks and other fraudulent methods. Since then, several state attorneys general have sued Insys over its marketing, and a number of company employees –– including founder John Kapoor –– have been hit with criminal charges.
“This case represents just one of the many lawsuits where Insys is alleged to have systematically defrauded patients and addicted them to its opioid product Subsys for purely profit driven motives,” Hemmings’ attorney, Mike Leonard of LeonardMeyer LLP, said in an email. “Moreover, it is great to see that law enforcement has taken a keen interest in not only Insys's representatives but also the doctors who have worked hand-in-hand with Insys to help carry out and perpetuate Insys's scheme for their own personal profit motives."
An Insys spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hemmings is represented by Michael I. Leonard of LeonardMeyer LLP.
Counsel information for Insys was not immediately available.
The case is Hemmings v. Insys Therapeutics, Inc., case number 1:18-cv-02036, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. -
Congress to boost opioid treatment, prevention dollars
Mar 21, 2018 | The Hill
By Rachel Roubein
Congress is adding a several billion dollar boost to the omnibus in order to combat the opioid epidemic — an effort to bolster prevention, treatment and law enforcement initiatives to combat the crisis killing thousands of people each year.
The $1.3 trillion spending package allocates around $4 billion to the opioid epidemic, much of which is new money appropriated this year.
The omnibus includes $1 billion in new grants to states and tribes to fight the epidemic, at least $500 million for a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) effort to research opioid addiction, a $350 million increase to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for prevention and surveillance, $130 million to help rural communities deal with the crisis, and more.
Dollars will also go to law enforcement, such as a nearly $300 million increase in law enforcement grant funding to combat the crisis.
The extra money was first agreed to in February, when Congress passed a budget deal that included $6 billion over two years for opioid and mental health efforts. Advocates had been pushing for more dollars to fight the crisis, which saw a nearly 28 percent increase in opioid-related deaths from 2015 to 2016.
It comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to hash out opioid legislation to send to President Trump’s desk.
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Congress is hyping up its opioid bills. But there’s not much to hype. (Opinion)
Mar 21, 2018 | Vox
By German Lopez
If you hear members of Congress tell it, this is really the moment that federal lawmakers are taking the opioid epidemic seriously. Over the next two days, the House is holding hearings on more than 20 bills to confront the opioid crisis — which Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), who’s overseeing the hearings, described as “really digging in so we can deliver relief for those devastated by this crisis.”
The bills, based on what experts have told me, seem to be generally positive — taking a mostly public health approach to addressing the opioid crisis. They’re very varied: Some aim to improve access to treatment, including highly effective medications for opioid addiction such as methadone and buprenorphine. Others push federal agencies to better regulate opioid painkillers and seek out non-opioid alternatives to pain treatment. Several try to improve education and awareness of opioid-related problems. (You can see a full list of the House bills here.)
But while there are quite a few bills in play, advocates and experts aren’t convinced this is good enough. It’s not that the bills are bad; it’s that they take a scattershot approach that nibbles at the issue around the margins — and misses problems that a more comprehensive strategy or package of bills could fully address.
“Many of these policies seem to be tinkering around the edges,” Dr. Leana Wen, the health commissioner of Baltimore, told me. “It’s not that they’re not helpful in some way,” she added. But what officials on the ground feel that they need is “sustained, specific funding” and bolder, more sweeping guidance that will help build up long-term solutions.
For example, one of the more promising measures that the House is considering would help hospitals set up discharge protocols for patients who come in after an opioid overdose — to help connect such patients with addiction treatment and other services as they’re let out of the hospital.
But one of the key problems in the US is that there often aren’t treatment options available. That’s one of the major reasons, according to the surgeon general’s 2016 addiction report, that only 10 percent of Americans with a substance use disorder get specialty treatment. So even if a hospital technically has protocols in place to refer someone to treatment, there just might not be treatment — and particularly evidence-based treatment — to connect that patient to.
To address the root concern here, local and state jurisdictions simply need more funding — to build up and maintain treatment. G. Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness, told me that the funding problem is the “elephant in the room.” As he put it, “Without money behind them, the bills aren’t going to do a whole lot.”
Congress has approved some money in recent years to address the opioid crisis. The 21st Century Cures Act, passed in 2016, added $1 billion over two years. The recent budget deal promised another $6 billion over two years.
While this might seem like a lot of money, it simply isn’t enough to deal with a crisis as big as the opioid epidemic. Experts, in fact, estimate that addressing the epidemic will require tens of billions of dollars each year — and, as importantly, the money has to be allocated in the long-term so officials on the ground have assurances that, say, the clinic they launch will be able to stay open years down the line.
It’s not yet clear where all of the House’s bills will end up. The Senate is working on its own separate measures, including a recently released bipartisan bill that commits an additional $1 billion. The currently in-the-works budget could also roll in some or all of these ideas as it allocates $6 billion to address the opioid crisis. More funds could be put forward in another package. All of this may be worked out if Congress moves closer to a final package of bills.
But as the opioid crisis continues and the death toll grows by the tens of thousands each year, experts and advocates are pushing for a more serious, comprehensive approach. And while they’re happy to see Congress discussing some proposals, they’re simply not enough yet.The opioid epidemic demands big, sustained funding
It’s difficult to overstate the scope of the opioid crisis, which is now the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in US history. Nearly 64,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2016, and at least two-thirds of those deaths were linked to opioids such as fentanyl, heroin, and prescribed painkillers. The total drug overdose deaths were higher than the number of deaths linked to guns, car crashes, or HIV/AIDS during any single year in America. Based on preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2017 was even worse.
This, advocates say, requires a massive solution. To put it in context, the New York Times recently asked 30 experts how they would spend $100 billion over five years to address the epidemic — a number comparable to how much the US spends domestically on HIV/AIDS. That sounds like a lot of money, but some experts cautioned that even that amount of cash may not be enough.
That’s in large part because a lot of America’s addiction treatment infrastructure is in a very bad spot. Consider: Medications like methadone and buprenorphine are widely considered the gold standard of opioid addiction care, with studies showing that they reduce all-cause mortality among opioid addiction patients by half or more and do a far better job keeping people in treatment than non-medication approaches. Yet federal data suggests that even when an addiction treatment clinic is available, fewer than half of facilities offer any of these opioid addiction medications as an option.
In Baltimore, Wen sees other problems. She has garnered national media attention for her efforts to improve access to naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. But as much as she’s tried to make naloxone — also known by its brand name, Narcan — accessible, she told me that she still needs to ration the limited supplies of the drug she has in her day-to-day work.
“It’s not that there’s a shortage of production,” Wen said. “We just don’t have the resources to purchase enough Narcan at the price that it’s offered at.”
The federal government could alleviate these kinds of problems. It could fund more clinics that provide medications for opioid addiction. It could send more money to cities like Baltimore so they can afford more naloxone.
Crucially, experts argue that this needs to be a long-term commitment — not just the one-off bills that Congress has been doing so far. One of the major complaints states have made so far with Cures Act funding, for example, is that there’s no guarantee the cash will be there a year or so later. That’s a problem: It’s going to be harder to justify building a clinic if you don’t know if you’ll be able to keep it open the next year.
“I used to work in the local level, and sometimes we wouldn’t even ask for federal grant funding because we had no way of funding these programs after a year or two,” Regina LaBelle, who served in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Obama years, told me. “That’s a serious concern for states that have limited budgets.”Congress needs to go bold
It goes beyond money too. While the congressional bills make some smart changes, some experts argue that the reforms are simply not bold, sweeping, or comprehensive enough.
Wen drew a comparison to past disease scares, such as Ebola and Zika. These crises led hospitals and doctors, with government support, to retrain and restructure so they were properly built to handle any patients that came in with potential problems related to these diseases.
“We are now dealing with an epidemic of opioid overdose and addiction,” Wen said. “Why shouldn’t we require all doctors and all hospital systems to treat the disease of addiction?”
For example, hospital systems could require that a certain percentage of doctors are trained to prescribe buprenorphine. Methadone treatment could be provided on-site or nearby. Every opioid painkiller prescription could be paired with a naloxone prescription.
There are also comprehensive models that states could adopt, such as Vermont’s hub and spoke system, to really integrate addiction treatment into the rest of health care.
This goes much further than setting up discharge protocols for opioid overdose patients. It’s about fundamentally changing how health care systems work to mitigate the risk of opioid overdose and addiction at every level and ensure patients have readily available care options — just as we expect patients to be able to go to a hospital and quickly get full care if they have, say, problems with diabetes or heart disease.
These kinds of changes would be a lot easier to enact with federal support and guidance.
As experts have long told me, there is no silver bullet to the opioid epidemic, but there’s a mix of policies that would help: more treatment (particularly medications like methadone and buprenorphine), more harm reduction (such as better access to naloxone), fewer painkiller prescriptions (while ensuring the drugs are available to those who really need them), and policies that can help address the root cause of addiction (like mental health issues and socioeconomic despair).
Implementing all of these ideas, however, will require significant, sustained funding and fundamental changes in how the country approaches health care. To accomplish that, Congress needs a broader plan — a strategy that it can gear bills toward, instead of the current scattershot approach it’s taking.
“There’s no strategy here,” LaBelle said, noting that this is an area in which some leadership from the White House would help. “These can be hard things to do. You need to start with a plan.”
Once Congress starts talking about a broader, more comprehensive strategy, advocates and experts will be more convinced that it’s taking this issue seriously. Until then, Congress is, as Wen put it, just tinkering.
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Pharma's doctor payments a troubling connection (Opinion)
Mar 22, 2018 | Williamson Daily News (WV)
By Staff
As a magnifying glass continues to be held over the far-reaching opioid epidemic, it becomes easier to see the red flags that preceded the now-ubiquitous problem.
One such warning sign was brought to light in a report CNN published last week. An analysis by the news organization and researchers at Harvard University found that in 2014 and 2015, opioid manufacturers paid hundreds of doctors across the country six-figure sums for speaking, consulting and other services.
Pharmaceutical company payments to doctors are legal and not unique to opioids, and are not in and of themselves troubling; in fact, CNN reported that in 2015, 48 percent of physicians received some pharmaceutical payment. It's illegal, however, for doctors to prescribe the drug in exchange for kickback payments from a manufacturer, the report noted.
The analysis found that the more opioid prescriptions a physician doled out annually, the more likely he or she was to get paid by the drugs' manufacturers.
On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5 percent nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median, and doctors in the top 1 percent of opioid prescribers received, on average, four times as much money as the typical doctor, CNN reported.
So does the additional money to doctors influence their prescribing habits and decisions?
"It's not proof positive, but it's another very significant data point in the growing evidence base that marketing payments from drug companies are not good for medicine and not good for patient care," said Dr. Daniel Carlat, former director of the Prescription Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts and a psychiatrist who blogs about conflicts of interest. "It makes me extremely concerned."
The new findings can serve as a cautionary tale to empower healthcare consumers going forward. Already, there are websites where members of the public can glean information on whether their doctors accepted payment from pharmaceutical companies, and for what purpose they were paid. They include the Open Payments Search Tool from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/) and ProPublica's drug company money database, Dollars for Docs (https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/).
If the opioid epidemic has resulted in a greater transparency and recognition of the influence "big pharma" has over physicians, perhaps it also can be an opportunity to shift thinking toward what's best for patients.
Were the highly compensated doctors listening to the issues of their patients, such as whether increasingly potent opioids were actually managing their chronic pain, or were they overly focused on the promises and prescribing recommendations of their pharmaceutical reps?
A 2016 perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that, in the wake of the opioid crisis, pharmaceutical sales will become more of a grassroots public health campaign, with a higher focus on education and outcomes - making sales secondary. That could be a welcome change to reinforce the trust between doctors and their patients.
If the health care industry can manage to back off marketing specific drugs, and focus more on the whole patient and what treatments are providing the most consistent and effective results, another of the hard-fought lessons of the opioid epidemic could meet a positive resolution.
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State prosecutors, TN AG battle over authority to sue Big Pharma in continuing opioids epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | Knox News (TN)
By Dave Boucher & Jamie Satterfield
With the death toll rising and the flow of opiates from Big Pharma unabated, state prosecutors and the Tennessee Attorney General’s office are locked in a legal battle for power and money.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III is challenging the legal authority of 14 state district attorneys general to sue Big Pharma and its partners in the opiate supply chain and insisting they had no right to engage a private law firm.
The DAs – representing 47 counties in Middle and East Tennessee - contend Slatery sat idly by as the opioid epidemic decimated their communities, so they took matters into their own hands under state laws they say give them the right to hire a law firm and mount their own legal fight against Big Pharma and its partners.
Nashville law firm Branstetter, Stranch and Jennings last year filed lawsuits in several state courts, including circuit courts in Campbell and Sullivan counties, on behalf of state prosecutors in judicial districts throughout East and Middle Tennessee against Big Pharma and its partners, including distributors.
Slatery’s office earlier this week filed motions to intervene in those cases – nine months after the first such lawsuit was filed.
Legal documents and letters obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee show the two sides aren’t just warring over authority. Money – who gets it and where it goes – is also at the root of the disagreement on how best to hold Big Pharma and its partners legally and financially accountable for the opioid epidemic.
Slatery’s office has repeatedly said it was investigating the possibility of suing Big Pharma but has yet to do so. But Slatery was recently tapped to lead a committee of attorneys general across the nation formed at the direction of a federal judge in Ohio who is pushing for a fast settlement with Big Pharma.Is 'global settlement' a money grab?
He argued in a letter to the DAs that he was much better positioned than they to get the state a share of that money, and their lawsuits were interfering with the possibility of what he termed a “global settlement.”
“My office has devoted significant resources to this issue and is leading a coalition of approximately 40 states actively investigating opioid manufacturers and distributors. “… we have the ability to seek relief for the state and its political subdivisions through a global resolution. Your litigation complicates that effort.”
More: Scott, Campbell counties hop on board Big Pharma racketeering lawsuit train
The DAs fired back that local communities – not the state – have borne the costs of the opioid epidemic, and local communities should be afforded the lion’s share of any damages that might result from Big Pharma litigation. Slatery’s proposed “global settlement,” they argue, is a money grab for state coffers.
“We know the idea of rolling up various opioid-related lawsuits into one settlement can seem appealing, especially when (Big Pharma is) already pleading poverty - despite billions in revenue generated at the expense of our citizens,” a letter on behalf of the DAs read. “That said, we also know that in these situations, local communities lose out.”
They noted the state attorney general’s office – under Slatery’s predecessor – was part of a 2007 settlement with Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of widely abused opioid OxyContin.
In that case, Tennessee received roughly $720,000 of the $19.5 million settlement. Of that money, $400,000 went to cover attorneys fees for the attorney general, according to the district attorneys.
The DAs also pointed out the attorney general’s office had authority under that settlement to force Big Pharma and its partners to reveal when communities received shipments of more opiates than population but did nothing.
“The terms of the settlement went unenforced and Tennessee settled its claims for pennies on the dollar,” the DAs’ letter stated. “The limited monies that were received went into state coffers in Nashville, not into the hands of the smaller communities bearing the greatest need.
“The results of this failed effort have been another decade lost to growing opioid-fueled abuse, addiction, and death,” the letter stated. “Our local communities have been devastated in this wake and we cannot, and we must not fail again.”Lying about opiates' addictive properties
There are two sets of tracks being laid across the nation in what is shaping up to be a Big Tobacco-style legal fight to force Big Pharma to cough up money for the addiction its wares have wrought. Like Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and its partners are accused of lying about the addictive properties of opiates.
The DAs are opting for state court action and are using state laws they argue give them specific authority to do so, including the Drug Dealer Liability Act.
Others, including the county commissions of Campbell and Scott counties, are using racketeering laws and federal court, where U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster of Ohio has already been tapped to try to marshal what’s known as a multidistrict litigation, or MDL.
He is urging a speedy, tough settlement of the more than 200 lawsuits that have been filed on behalf of local governments and hospitals and other groups across the nation in the past two years. Slatery has been participating in conferences helmed by Polster.
Jonathan Taylor, with the Knoxville firm Taylor & Knight and Nashville firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, has filed MDL actions against Big Pharma on behalf of several East and Middle Tennessee county governments. Like the DAs, county governments also are trying to ensure any money reaped from Big Pharma goes back to local communities, Taylor said.
“A number of county commissions that we represent in Tennessee have recognized their responsibilities to taxpayers and have understood the urgency of bringing these lawsuits now,” Taylor said.
Slatery has not filed any challenges to those MDL cases. In response to questions from USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee on Wednesday, Slatery's office pointed to an opinion column Slatery recently wrote.
In that column, Slatery made clear he is backing the MDL settlement effort.
"We believe the best course of action is the one we are taking - a multi-state investigation that focuses on preparing for litigation with the possibility of a comprehensive settlement," Slatery wrote.A war with AG's office?
Stephen Crump, who serves as district attorney general for the 10th Judicial District, in Southeast Tennessee said he and his fellow DAs don’t want a war with Slatery’s office but feel compelled to act.
“I think it’s a shame in a war that ought to be us against them, it’s started out as us against us,” Crump said. “We have acted as they sat. We hope that they will join us in this, but we will not go away. The only group that benefits from their actions would be the opioid manufactures. It’s certainly not Tennesseans.”
Jared Effler, a district attorney general whose district includes Campbell and Claiborne counties, pointed on Wednesday to the 2007 settlement as proof he and his fellow DAs were right to file suit.
“That settlement failed to provide any resources to our rural communities and has allowed the opioid epidemic to explode,” he said. “For me to sit by and allow the failures of the AG'S 2007 settlement to repeat themselves would be a dereliction of my duties to the citizens of the 8th Judicial District.”
Campbell County currently ranks third in the nation for the number of opiate prescriptions as a percentage of population, with a rate of 195 prescriptions for every 100 citizens. Claiborne County ranks seventh.
Hearings on the motion to intervene filed by Slatery’s office have not yet been set.
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Mayor Ganim, Sen. Blumenthal Call For Feds To Act On Opioids
Mar 21, 2018 | Bridgeport Patch (CT)
By Alfred Branch
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim and United States Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are teaming up with Dr. Lee Forest of the Fairfield County Medical Association to call on the U.S. Justice Department to step up the fight against opioid addiction.
In a release issued Wednesday from Ganim's office, the Mayor said that the fight includes a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers that is being pursued by cities and states.
"We have made the fight against opioid addiction a top priority in Bridgeport and hope that the federal government will do the same," said Mayor Ganim in a statement. "The manufacturers cannot continue to undermine the progress we are trying to achieve which is why we are taking such a strong stand. A company's profits should not be put above the health of the public."
Added Sen. Blumenthal, "The federal government should be committing more resources toward helping Bridgeport and other communities combat the opioid epidemic. I will work with Connecticut and federal officials to determine how we can further a broader collaborative effort."
The lawsuit is against pharmaceutical companies who engage in irresponsible marketing techniques. These tactics are a way for manufacturers to boost profits by encouraging addiction.
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Mar 22, 2018 | The Moulton Advertiser (AL)
By John David Palmer
A hefty 174-page lawsuit has been filed against multiple pharmaceutical companies in which The City of Moulton is listed as a plaintiff, according to local attorney Mark Dutton.
The lawsuit is unique in that it claims pharmaceutical companies that distribute opioids have caused a public nuisance for municipalities like the City of Moulton.
“There has never been a lawsuit like this before, as far as I know,” Dutton said.
The Moulton City Council voted in to join the lawsuit and hire Dutton to represent the city's interests in the case.
The Pensacola law firm Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty & Proctor, PA will serve as lead counsel in the case.
Defendants in the lawsuit include: Purdue Pharma, Inc., Cephalon, Inc., Teva Ltd., Jassen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endo Health Solutions, Inc., Allergan PLC, Actavis, Inc., Mallinckrodt, PLC, McKesson Corporation, and Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation.
According to the lawsuit, enough prescription opioids were sold by 2010 to medicate every adult in the United States with a dose of five milligrams of hydrocodone every four hours for one month, It also says the deaths toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has more than tripled in the past decade.
The lawsuit claims the multiple defendants were negligent in the distribution of these drugs to the public.
Dutton said it could be a good time to bring a case like this before a judge because of the negative attention opioids have received in the press as of late.
If the plaintiffs win the case, the city could benefit financially from the lawsuit. Though, Dutton says it is much too soon in the process to even guess how much.
He said the defendants have not responded as of the time of publication.
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MACON-BIBB COUNTY TO SUE DRUG COMPANIES THAT MAKE, SELL OPIOIDS
Mar 22, 2018 | WMGT (GA)
By Edna Ruiz
Macon-Bibb County is filing a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies that make and distribute opioids.
Tuesday night, the county commission passed a resolution that would move forward with the litigation process.
Macon-Bibb is joining counties and cities across the nation in a multi-district litigation. The county agreed to hire former Bibb County attorney, Virgil Adams, along with another law firm in Athens, Blasingame, Burch, Garrard and Ashley, PC.
Adams claims the drug companies withheld information and the county had to suffer million dollar consequences.
“It’s an ongoing nuisance and we definitely want to stop, so this does not continue and governments to be burdened by this excessive prescription,” said Adams.
“These drugs such as codeine, Oxycontin, were marketed as alleviators of chronic pain and did not work to do so,” said Adams.
Adams believes the drug companies failed to mention how addictive the drugs would be.
“If you have an individual that has a prescription for a pain killer type narcotic for whatever reason, they no longer are prescribed it and they get addicted to it, they’re going to be looking for it out on the street,” said Captain Randy Gonzalez with the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office’s drug unit.
Capt. Gonzalez and his drug unit team have seen it happen. That’s why they had to take extra measures last summer and buy more than 300 Narcan kits to counteract an opioid overdose.
“Along with purchasing those kits, comes the training that each deputy and investigator has to be trained that’s going to carry this kit,” said Capt. Gonzalez.
That money spent is what the county is hoping to get back. As well as money spent on rehabilitation centers and drug courts. But Adams says it’s more than that.
“We want to stop the addiction and the abuse so that’s part of this as well, to end this problem,” said Adams.
The lawsuit also accuses drug companies’ failure to mention excessive prescriptions of opioids in Bibb county. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2011, for every 100 citizens, there were 165 opioid prescriptions.
Adams says the lawsuit will be filed in the next few days. He didn’t say how much it is suing for, but did say the county spent millions of dollars because of the opioid epidemic.
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Manatee Co. joins City of Sarasota in suing drug companies over opioid epidemic
Mar 22, 2018 | WTSP (FL)
By Isabel Mascarenas
The fight against the opioid epidemic is heading to the courtroom.
Manatee County commissioners approved filing a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies to reclaim damages.
Manatee joins more than 200 other municipalities nationwide, including the City of Sarasota, to file a suit. Both communities have led the state in overdoses and deaths.
In 2016 at the peak of the epidemic locally, the number of deaths in both counties totaled 263.
In Sarasota, every EMS call cost around $25,000 and each dose of Narcan, an overdose-reversing drug, cost $300. Add to that the cost for treatment, incarceration and autopsies.
In two weeks, Sarasota attorney Bill Robertson will be filing a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the city. He expects damages past, present and future could top millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Robertson says pharmaceutical companies did what big tobacco companies did and misled the public with false information.
At one time, opioids were used only for short-term pain and end of life control of pain, not chronic pain because they can be highly addicting after two weeks' use, Robertson said.
“They started pushing use of it in chronic pain across the country. They used false fronts and a lot of funding for organizations that were publishing publications to justify the use of opioids,” explained Robertson.
He said the pharmaceutical companies were fined $200 million by the federal government for their “malfeasance.” Robertson said,
“That’s a drop in the bucket. They made $11 billion in 2014. The only way these companies understand things is through the financial pocketbook and being punished by it and being held accountable for it.”
Robertson says most of the lawsuits are now consolidated under one large federal lawsuit overseen by a federal judge in Ohio. He believes more lawsuits, including independent lawsuits by victims’ families, will be filed.
He believes pharmaceutical companies will likely be forced to settle in the next year or two.
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McCormick County considers joining counties suing regarding opioid crisis
Mar 21, 2018 | Index County (SC)
By Conor Hughes
More than 20 South Carolina counties are suing members of the pharmaceutical industry for damages relating to the opioid crisis and more are considering joining their ranks.
Paul Agnew, an attorney in Abbeville and former state representative, and Charleston-based attorney Paul Tinkler spoke Tuesday night to McCormick County Council about possible litigation.
Tinkler is working with Marc Bern & Partners, a New York-based law firm, in offering to represent counties that file suit against the companies.
“This epidemic has affected our state, and we are attempting to recover money on behalf of the counties,” Tinkler said.
Tinkler said the cost to local governments caused by the opioid epidemic gives them legal standing to sue.
“The Attorney General of South Carolina has done research on this and has opined that local governments probably do have standing to bring these cases and has lauded the efforts of local governments to go out and do something about this opioid epidemic,” he told Council.
Tinkler said he wants to see the respective lawsuits tried in state court and to try each case in front of a jury selected from the plaintiff county.
“We believe in the prospect of having a McCormick County jury, comprised of citizens of McCormick County, deciding the case and deciding how McCormick has been damaged,” he said.
If McCormick County chose to file suit, it would be joining counties such as Spartanburg, Greenville and Charleston.
There are 37 defendants listed in the lawsuit filed by Spartanburg County, according to reports from the Associated Press, including drug manufacturers, pharmacies, distributors and doctors.
Aiken, Abbeville and Newberry counties are among other local governments considering legal action, Tinkler said.
Earlier Tuesday evening, Agnew met behind closed doors with Greenwood County Council, but the nature of their deliberations was not publicly stated.
McCormick County Council Chairman Charles Jennings said the opioid crisis has affected McCormick County and Council is considering filing suit.
“If we could get out front on it, it would be much better,” he said. “We want to stop the pharmaceutical companies producing all these things and keep them from our people.”
G.P. Callison Jr., McCormick County’s attorney, said Council might make a decision as early as next month.
“We’re certainly going to take a look at it,” he said. “As long as the county doesn’t get hit with cost and expenses.”
The law firm said it will cover all upfront legal fees and any money it collects will be out of the settlement if they win.
“We don’t propose that it cost the county anything,” Tinkler said. “It should be done on a contingency basis, that is, if we collect a dollar, the lawyers get paid from the collection. And there are inevitably costs of litigation, those would be advanced by the law firm that I’m working with, Marc Bern.”
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Watauga County Agrees to Join 26 Other North Carolina Counties in Opioid Lawsuit
Mar 21, 2018 | High Country Press (NC)
By Nathan Ham
Opioid abuse is a problem in so many towns and counties, not just in North Carolina, but in every state around the country.
On Tuesday, the Watauga County Commissioners unanimously approved joining 26 other North Carolina counties in a lawsuit against opioid pain killer manufacturers and distributors.
Attorney Garry B. Whitaker of Winston-Salem spoke to the commissioners about joining the lawsuit.
Whitaker spoke to commissioners in Caldwell County earlier in March and also got them on board with the lawsuit. According to Whitaker, declaring the drug as a public nuisance allows counties to get involved with the lawsuit.
North Carolina General Statute 19-1 states that any building or placed used for the sale or possession of any controlled substance as defined by the North Carolina Controlled Substances Act constitutes a nuisance.
This lawsuit, according to documents provided to the commissioners, is targeting wholesale distributors and not local pharmacies or doctors in any of the counties involved.
Under North Carolina law, counties are allowed to seek relief in order to try and shrink the effects of the opioid epidemic, including requiring the wholesale distributors to forfeit income earned through unlawful activity.
Distributors and manufacturers are being targeted in this state-wide lawsuit mainly because of their failures to report suspicious opioid orders to the DEA and any other agencies associated with trying to slow the opioid epidemic.
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Watauga County had 64 opiate-related deaths from 1999 to 2016. There were 42 opiate-related deaths in Avery County, 52 in Ashe County and 173 in Caldwell County over that same period of time.
“The drug manufacturers have spent millions of dollars on promotional activities and materials, that in our view trivialize the high risks of using opioids while overstating the benefits of using them for chronic pain,” Whitaker said in a press release. “Three wholesale distributors control at least 85 percent of the market share for distribution of prescription opioids, they have combined annual revenues of $480 billion. Certainly, they owe the citizens and county the duty of correctly reporting suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which we contend they have not done properly.”
Across the state, opioid overdoses that required emergency room visits have nearly doubled since 2010. In North Carolina, there were 2,967 emergency room visits from opioid overdoses. That number climbed to 5,762 in 2017. There have already been 844 emergency room visits in the first two months of 2018.
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City of Kent to sue opioid companies for deceptive practices
Mar 21, 2018 | Kent Reporter (WA)
By Steve Hunter
The Kent City Council unanimously agreed to join hundreds of other cities across the nation to sue opioid manufacturers and distributors for deceptive marketing practices.
The council voted 7-0 Tuesday night to authorize Mayor Dana Ralph to hire the Seattle law firm of Keller Rohrback on a contingency fee basis to file the lawsuit. Council members initially discussed the possibility of a suit during a March 6 executive session.
“A number of cities, counties and states have been filing lawsuits recently against opioid manufacturers and marketers,” City Attorney Pat Fitzpatrick said prior to the council vote. “The foundations of the lawsuits are these companies flooded the market with very, very highly addictive drugs under the guise of prescription medication and that the risk of the drug was not properly disclosed.
“In fact, addiction was in some cases used as a strategy to sell more of the product and the dangers of the drugs were not disclosed. As a result, opioids were over-prescribed, opioid addiction increased dramatically over the last decade, overdose deaths from opioids increased dramatically, and these activities have spawned a heroin epidemic.”
Fitzpatrick said the defendants produced opioid prescription drugs and that 80 percent of those who became addicted to heroin in the past decade started with a prescription to OxyContin or another prescription opioid.
“When their prescriptions ran out and they could no longer get their drug from their doctor, they moved to street heroin – that’s really the foundation of the lawsuit,” Fitzpatrick said.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported last year that 360 deaths in 2016 were caused by drugs and 63 percent of those were caused by opioids, including morphine, heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone.
“Heroin addiction has had a detrimental impact on the entire Kent community – individuals, families, businesses, organizations, schools and our homeless population,” Ralph said. “This drug has also caused an increase in crime, and burdened our jail, court and social service systems. To the extent pharmaceutical companies and marketers are responsible because of deceptive business practices, they need to be held accountable.”
Fitzpatrick talked about the intent of the lawsuit, to be filed against Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solution, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and other defendants expected to be named later.
“The real goal of the lawsuit is to force these defendants to basically fund the remedy for the problem around our nation,” Fitzpatrick said.
About 250 cities, counties and states sued opioid makers, wholesalers, distributors and marketers last year, according to a January article by USA Today. The companies deny the claims and say litigation should be halted until the Food and Drug Administration-ordered studies on the long-term risks and benefits of opioids are completed, according to the article.
Cities in Washington that have sued the drug makers include Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Mount Vernon, Burlington and Sedro Woolley. Many of the cases have been transferred to U.S. District Court in Ohio, which is overseeing hundreds of similar cases. Fitzpatrick said Kent’s suit will probably end up in Ohio as well.
Fitzpatrick said hiring Keller Rohrback on a contingency basis means the city will not have to pay any money, but the law firm will get its fee from any settlement in the case.
Councilman Dennis Higgins emphasized the importance of the suit.
“I really feel this action is one of the most important things that we can do to make things better, not just here in Kent but in our country and our society,” Higgins said. “We need to see a change in our society and oftentimes that is out of our capability to affect. But this is something concrete we can do to make that happen.”
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City of Kent suing opioid manufacturers and marketers
Mar 21, 2018 | Business Examiner
By Staff
Cities all over the United States have felt the effects of opioid addiction. Kent is among the cities hard hit by the epidemic. On March 20, Kent Mayor Dana Ralph and the Kent City Council authorized the filing of a lawsuit against manufacturers and marketers of prescription opioids in the U.S.
“Heroin addiction has had a detrimental impact on the entire Kent community — individuals, families, businesses, organizations, schools, and our homeless population,” Ralph stated, in a news release. “This drug has also caused an increase in crime, and burdened our jail, court, and social service systems. To the extent pharmaceutical companies and marketers are responsible because of deceptive business practices, they need to be held accountable.”
Kent police officers assert that much of Kent’s homeless population are addicted to opioids, and opioid addiction has increased crime in the city. Studies have found that approximately 80 percent of individuals using heroin in the U.S. began using opioids with prescription painkillers.
In addition to the city’s own in-house legal team, Kent will retain the law firm Keller Rohrbackas outside counsel on the case. The lawsuit claims that the actions of the opioid manufacturers and marketers were negligent, caused a public nuisance, violated the Washington Consumer Protection Act, violated the federal RICO statute, and unjustly profited from their deceitful business dealings.
Kent is among hundreds of cities across the U.S. suing opioid manufacturers for similar reasons. There is legal precedent for these kinds of massive lawsuits making change. In the 1990s, tobacco manufacturers were sued by the Department of Justice, were charged with fraudulent and unlawful conduct, and forced to pay millions in medical reimbursements.
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Opioid lawsuit preparation continues
Mar 22, 2018 | Peninsula Daily News (WA)
By Jesse Major
Work on preparing Clallam County’s lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors is still underway as a federal judge looks at settling more than 400 similar lawsuits from cities, counties and tribes across the nation within the year.
Clallam County commissioners voted 3-0 Jan. 30 to retain the Seattle law firm Keller Rohrback and join hundreds of other government entities across the nation in the federal multi-district litigation in an effort to recover the cost of fighting the opioid epidemic locally.
The Jamestown S’Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish tribes filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court earlier this month.
A representative of Keller Rohrback told the Clallam County Board of Health on Tuesday that the firm had been appointed to the damages committee for the multi-district litigation and that the firm is putting together a team of experts who will work to determine what the damages have been in counties.
Not all responded
Officials on the Board of Health told the firm that not all of the county’s departments had yet responded to a questionnaire asking about the impact of opioids. That included the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.
“We would anticipate a lot of the county’s costs would be in law enforcement,” said Dr. Chris Frank, Clallam County health officer. “The jail is a high-cost part of the system.”
More than 400 lawsuits — filed by cities, counties and tribes across the nation — are being consolidated in a federal court in Ohio. Proceedings will be overseen by Judge Dan Aaron Polster.
Polster is encouraging the plaintiffs and defendants to reach a settlement sooner rather than later, with hopes of coming to a resolution that addresses the national crisis by the end of the year.
Several county departments already had responded to the questionnaire, many of which said they had seen increased costs that are directly related to opioid use disorder.
District Court No. 2 responded to the questionnaire, saying many cases are related to drug use, though it’s difficult to put a dollar amount on how much has been spent dealing with those cases.
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said the opioid epidemic has increased costs to the general fund due to more opioid-related prosecutions and more opioid-caused overdoses.
Juvenile and Family Services said it has seen a rising number of children in the dependency system due to the opioid epidemic.
“Most/many of these children are removed from homes where drugs and opioids are being used,” according to the department’s questionnaire. “The youth require foster families, [Court Appointed Special Advocates] volunteers and volunteer coordinators, court clerking and staffing hours, attorney and court costs, etc.”
Health and Human Services reported having several programs associated with the opioid epidemic and is able to track data back to 2013.
Health and Human Services has seen an increase in the number of clients and number of syringes exchanged, has seen an increased emphasis on naloxone distribution and is now seeing the number of reported opioid overdoses declining.
“Clallam County has been hit hard by the opioid crisis,” the department wrote in its questionnaire. “Putting more effort into addressing the public health aspect of the opioid crisis ultimately results in a loss of capacity to address other important public health programs such as communicable disease investigations, immunizations and well child screening.”
The opioid-related death rate in Clallam County was 16.5 per 100,000 from 2012 to 2016, according to state Department of Health statistics.
Mason County had the second-highest opioid death rate at 14.7 per 100,000, health officials said.
Jefferson County’s opioid-related death rate was 10.3 per 100,000, ranking No. 10 among the 39 counties of the state.
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County Mulls Local Law Calling Opioid Epidemic ‘Public Nuisance’
Mar 22, 2018 | The Post Journal (NY)
By Katrina Fuller
A local law declaring the opioid epidemic and its effects a “public nuisance” will go before the full County Legislature next week.
The law, which will go before the Audit and Control committee this morning, was introduced by county attorney Steve Abdella at the Human Services Committee meeting Wednesday. Abdella said the law is related to a “upcoming lawsuit” the county will be a part of against pharmaceutical companies that manufacture and market opioids to the public.
Abdella said the county obtained outside counsel, who advised the county to pass the local law declaring the epidemic a public nuisance; the law would also create a recovery procedure to recoup some of the costs incurred by the county due to the opioid epidemic.
“They have advised us and recommended to bolster our ongoing action that we and the other counties adopt this local law,” Abdella said.
In August 2017, the legislature unanimously approved a resolution that authorized litigation against drug companies to recover damages. Similar lawsuits were filed by other counties against pharmaceutical manufacturers including Purdue, Endo and Cephalon for their alleged role in misleading doctors and others regarding how addictive certain prescription painkillers were.
The damages being sought include costs for social and health services, as well as policing that were incurred by counties as a result of the epidemic.
A similar lawsuit that ended in a settlement occurred against tobacco companies in 1998.
In the purpose and intent section of the law, the language spells out that part of the opioid crisis is due to the “overabundance of prescription opioids.”
“Vast amounts of prescription opioids were sold, distributed and prescribed in the county over the past several years, a practice that continues to day,” the law reads. “The selling, distributing and prescribing of large amounts of opioids in our community has created a public health and safety hazard affecting the residents of the county.”
The proposed legislation would allow the county to recover costs, despite the free public services doctrine, and would allow the county to seek reimbursement for the costs from the responsible party. The proposed law defines the “responsible party” as the person or corporation whose “negligent, intentional or otherwise wrongful conduct” caused the incident or issue that resulted in costs incurred by the county or whoever is found liable or made responsible for the costs of the county by a court.
The proposed law states that if the “responsible party” fails to pay the costs, the county can initiate and recover costs through administrative, civil or criminal action, which would also include attorney’s fees, interest or any other payment or type of damages.
The proposed law, if approved, would apply retroactively.
The local law is dependent on the approval the full legislature next week. The legislature meets on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Gerace Office Building on the third floor.
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Marshfield joins class action suit against opioid manufacturers
Mar 21, 2018 | Wicked Local Marshfield (MA)
By James Kukstis
Throughout the country, communities are coping with the devastating effects being wrought by the current opioid crisis, and now Marshfield is joining more than 70 other communities in Massachusetts to try and hold someone responsible.
Selectmen agreed to join a class action lawsuit being brought against manufacturers and distributors of opioids being organized by Richard Sandman, part of Massachusetts Opioid Litigation Attorneys.
The suit seeks monetary damages to cover the costs of emergency response, NARCAN, management programs, outpatient treatment, counseling and other services and programs that communities have needed to offer residents as a result of the epidemic.
“We’ll be asked to provide information on the costs the community has incurred and future costs projected as a result of the hazards associated with abuse for which there was not fair warning,” said Town Counsel Robert Galvin.
Between 2012 and 2016, at least 25 Marshfield residents died from opioid overdoses and a large number of overdoses were reversed thanks to emergency response teams. Nine of those deaths occurred in 2016 alone.
“There’s clearly a problem with regards to the use of opioids,” said Michael Bradley, chairman of the board of selectmen. “I’m happy to be joining this. There’s clearly a problem, and we’re all trying to do something about it.”
In 2008, Sandman represented Marshfield in a class action lawsuit over the presence of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MBTE) in drinking water supplies, which resulted in a $500,000 settlement for the town.
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Summit County files lawsuit against Big Pharma for alleged role in opioid crisis
Mar 22, 2018 | Park Record (UT)
By Angelique McNaughton
Summit County became the first county in Utah on Tuesday to file a lawsuit against some of the country's largest opioid manufacturers and distributors, claiming deceptive and misleading marketing campaigns have led to the national opioid epidemic.
The suit alleges that corporate greed has caused pharmaceutical companies to put "their desire for profits above the health, well-being, and safety of Summit County residents," according to court documents. The county is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.
The 240-page complaint was filed in Summit County's 3rd District Court by the three firms retained to represent the county: Napoli Shkolnik PLLC; Dewsnup King Olsen Worel Havas & Mortensen; and Magleby Cataxinos & Greenwood. Napoli Shkolnik PLLC is a New York City-based firm representing more than 100 counties across the country in similar suits.
The lawsuit names 25 businesses and individuals from nine major opioid manufactures and distributors, including Purdue Pharma L.P; Endo Pharmaceuticals; Allergan; Teva; Cephalon; Janssen; AmerisourceBergen; Cardinal Health; and McKesson.
"It is a scourge. It is an epidemic and it is time to do something about it," said Colin King, counsel from Dewsnup King Olsen Worel Havas & Mortensen, during a press conference at the County Courthouse Tuesday. "The county attorney and County Council has been strongly supportive of this. Our position, along with hundreds of other counties, is that we can and will do something about this."
The lawsuit claims Summit County has been forced to spend a significant amount of money to combat the opioid epidemic locally, similar to the argument that is being made in hundreds of other cases.
For the last several years, Summit County has focused on ways to address mental health and substance abuse challenges through increased services and resources. As part of the litigation, the county plans to develop a comprehensive public health plan.
"The impacts of opioid overdoses are hitting at the county level," King said. "Counties are the ones that are enduring the brunt of the costs through the county-funded programs, including Sheriff's Departments and treatment centers."
The suit alleges doctors did not create the misuse and abuse of opioids and were, in fact, misled themselves by Big Pharma.
"The epidemic came about completely by the marketing of the defendants," King said. "They wanted to market and sell more drugs, and they did it by misinformation campaigns that were leveled in large part to doctors."
John Parker, senior vice president of Healthcare Distribution Alliance, a national organization that represents pharmaceutical companies, said in an email statement provided to The Park Record the misuse of prescription opioids is a "complex public health challenge."
"It requires a collaborative and systemic response that engages all stakeholders," he said. "Given our role, the idea that distributors are responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and is regulated. Those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation."
Healthcare Distribution Alliance represents 35 distribution companies, along with more than 130 manufacturers and 50 service providers/international members. The organization represents AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, three of the defendants named in the suit.
The three legal firms representing the county are working on a contingency fee agreement and will only be paid if the county is awarded money in the lawsuit. The legal counsel will be working closely with the Summit County Health Department throughout the course of the suit to understand the statistical impacts of the opioid epidemic on the county.
"We are looking at those kinds of specifics and data right now," King said. "But, we didn't want to wait. It wasn't necessary. It was important, though, to get this on file and move this along as quickly as possible. Litigation is expensive and difficult and it takes a long time."
Summit County Council members unanimously approved a resolution earlier this month recognizing the damaging effects of opioid addiction. County Council Chair Kim Carson said in a press release that the overuse of opioids has significantly impacted residents.
"We as a community are very concerned with the easy access to opioids and the devastating effects these drugs have on our families, friends and neighbors," she said. "All of us have been affected by the prolific distribution of these drugs and the false assurances given as to their safety. We need resources to help educate our citizens on the dangers of opioid addiction and on alternatives to their use."
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County Board endorses joining multi-county opioid suit
Mar 21, 2018 | Kendall County Now (IL)
By Tony Scott
Kendall County Board members endorsed joining a multi-county lawsuit against opioid manufacturers during a recent committee meeting.
Board Chairman Scott Gryder, Vice Chairman Lynn Cullick and board members Bob Davidson, Matthew Prochaska, Matt Kellogg, Audra Hendrix and Judy Gilmour all agreed that Kendall County should move forward with joining the lawsuit at the March 15 Committee of the Whole meeting, although there was no formal vote taken. Tony Giles, John Purcell and Elizabeth Flowers were absent from the meeting.
The board is expected to vote on formally joining the lawsuit at its April 3 meeting.
Attorneys with the firm of Meyers and Flowers, which has offices in St. Charles and Chicago, attended the March 15 meeting and a board meeting in February to discuss joining the group of suburban Chicago counties that are also suing. Meyers and Flowers is representing the other counties.
During the March 15 discussion, Davidson asked attorney Michael Lenert of the Meyers and Flowers firm what the lawsuit would cost the county. Lenert said the representation is based on a contingent arrangement, so it would not cost the county anything except for a portion of the settlement money if the counties are victorious in the lawsuit.
“There is no risk to any of your taxpayers,” Lenert said. “If we were to litigate this case hypothetically for five years and come back to you and say we’re really sorry, we fought the good fight but unfortunately we were unable to recover any money for Kendall County, the county would not owe our law firm any money for the costs that we’ve undertaken to litigate this case or any attorney’s fees.”
Lenert said it would be up to the county as to how to distribute any funds it might receive from a settlement.
Lenert said the cost of opioid addiction runs in the billions of dollars.
“This epidemic, it’s a real problem,” he said. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the annual cost nationwide for opioid addiction is over $78 billion. Most of us know people that have had issues with opioid addiction. It’s affected every county across the United States. ... I think it’s clear that Kendall County has had to face this issue, has paid a lot of money to try to address this issue, and we hope to work with Kendall County to try to abate this problem.”
Gryder mentioned a recent panel discussion hosted by the county’s Health Department that involved various members of the law enforcement, mental health, and judicial communities.
“A couple numbers stuck out in my head from [the panel]: one was 13, and the other was 115,” he said. “There were 13 deaths in Kendall County last year that were the direct result of opioid overdoses, and those are just the ones that occurred in our county. We’re not able to track the ones that maybe the overdose occurred in our county and then they passed away at one of the hospitals that surround our county. So the number could be much higher. The 115 was ... 115 a day across the nation are dying [of opioid overdoses]. It really sticks out in your mind that it’s something that’s preventable and shouldn’t be occurring.”
Kellogg asked how the damages would be calculated for each county. Lenert said they have experts working with all of the counties to determine a “damage profile” on how much each county is impacted by the issue.
Weis said the epidemic has affected the county financially, not to mention the impact on local families.
“We look at everything from a typical fire and EMS response to treatment at a medical provider to rehab facilities to the impact in the court system if they’re charged with a crime to dealing with... penitentiary time – these are just, off the top of my head, costs that are associated with [opioid abuse],” he said. “That’s just the parts that we see. The impact on families, the impact on society, we’re seeing this across the board as well.”
Board member Audra Hendrix said she heard a PSA that stated the number of people dying from opioid overdoses per day was equal to a fatal plane crash every day.
Weis said that while he doesn’t think joining the lawsuit will solve the opioid problem in Kendall County, it could help offset some of the costs to the county.
“You don’t have to [join] the suit. I’m not saying it’s going to solve the problem by filing this suit, I’m not here to say this is the solution to the opiate problem, [but] it is one avenue to address an ever-growing problem,” he said. “It could be financially beneficial to the county to recoup some of the costs that’s incurred by doing this – there’s a cost to have people respond to these things. The people that make the product are the ones who should be held responsible. Whether [the board members] choose to or not, it’s up to you.”
Referring to Hendrix’s plane crash analogy, Weis said, “If planes were falling out of the sky at a rate of that many per day, they would do something to the manufacturer of the airplane to say, look, you can’t continue to make a product that kills that many people per day without fixing the problem.”
Following the discussion, board members discussed whether they wanted to move forward with the suit. All did, although Davidson and Kellogg said they would like to have on record where the money will go if the county receives any from the lawsuit.
“I’m for filing suit immediately,” Hendrix said.
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Mar 22, 2018 | National Programming
By BLOOM (Bloomberg)
Video Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-03-22/bloomberg-big-decisions-johnson-johnson-ceo-alex-gorsky-video
Rough Transcript: fresh out of west point, he led a platoon of 22 young soldiers. now he has 100 34,000 employees at a company were $350 billion, johnson & johnson. ceo alex gorsky took the home when the iconic image of johnson & johnson was tarnished and made changes to get the company on track while making the biggest acquisition and the company's history and managing the transition to obamacare. after donald trump was elected president, he helped to represent a growing health care industry that already accounts for over 17% of the u.s. economy 9:31 PM, and he is the first to say his industry has to change. we sat down with alex gorsky for an extended conversation. alex gorsky, chairman and ceo of johnson & johnson, welcome to "bloomberg big decisions. . right now you run a big company, 134,000 employees. fresh out of west point, a platoon, 22 young men dependent upon you, and frankly you were putting them sometimes in harm's way. how are you a different leader today than you were alex: at 22? alex:hopefully -- at 22. ? alex: hopefully i have grown a lot. starting in the military, you have a lot to learn. a lesson i learned is you have to are in the right to lead and to be in command. while you may have a rank on your sleeve, that does not immediately but still upon you to respect and credibility of 9:32 PMyour soldiers. so being able to listen to noncommissioned officers, being able to be trained by them in many ways is very similar to what i had to do at johnson & johnson. when i was at the academy and army, country, duty, honor, trying to protect our country. being able to work for johnson & johnson with the credo with such an explicit commitment, at 75-year commitment around patients, consumers, employees, communities, there was a lot of alignment between those two organizations. david: you came up to the ranks at johnson & johnson but did leave to go to novartis, then came back. what was the experience of coming back? alex: i left for the same reason many people leave. i had a basic disconnect with the person i was working for at the time. look, as i look back, i probably would have done differently. i ended up going to work at 9:33 PManother very good company, one where i learned a lot from a very different from johnson & johnson, but one that help make me a better leader. i always knew i had a strong attachment to johnson & johnson. after some conversations with people and realizing there might be a path back, i took it. i tell you what, i cannot be happier. david: when you walked in first a as ceo, did you have an agenda? alex: for me, it started with having been in the company as long as i was, there was no doubt i had some ideas about what we should be doing, what we could do better, and to be clear, look, the company had an incredible track record of performance, and it in fact was making very good progress so in some ways the challenge was had you take this iconic company with the reputation of my predecessors, the kind of performance they had, and how do you make that better over time? 9:34 PMwhat we started with was taking some ideas. like every leader, you have to listen and make sure you are understanding and engaging. i think you also have a point of view. david: did you get resistance? one of the challenges for a leader taking over successful organization is, why do we need change? sometimes it is easier to take over one that is failing because you can make changes easily. alex: of course. one of the things we spent a lot of time on early on was my transition -- during my transition was an evolution in my complete decentralization, to one where we frankly needed to standardize, and in some cases centralize, certain functions and practices. for example, quality practices com i, information-technology had too many systems. 9:35 PMdavid: it sounds great and it is wonderful when all those are aligned on one side. when you are a leader like a ceo, sometimes they don't align and there are trade-offs that have to be made. that gets into the essence of how to make decisions as a leader. i want to give you a good example. a drug that was profitable for johnson & johnson, a little long in the tooth. there are similars out there where you can pay less money and get them, and yet johnson & johnson resist that. how do you go to the process of deciding at what point should we be backing off something and letting it go forth for the larger good? alex: yeah, well, look, we always want to integrate values and principles into our decision-making. it is a magic moment a johnson & johnson and we are making a decision and someone makes a comment, this is a creative decision. 9:36 PMit does have a pause button and make everyone pushed back from the table and get a closer consideration. the other interesting and important aspect of a credo is it is a and-and statement. it does not say take care of parents or patients or the employees or the community and the shareholders, it says and. inherent to that is a conflict, but what it makes you do is balance those different parties as you are going to the decision-making progress and makes you reach out and talk to other people, not feeling you will make that decision on your own. when we do that, we have a much higher probability of getting it right. when it relates to the drug, what i continue is it has been one of the most successful products for johnson & johnson. it was the first antibody. we did more than 42 clinical trials. it has been used around the world and a number of different conditions, and we know from our clinical trials that over 70% of the time patients are getting a good result. 9:37 PMwhat is important is a generic is different between a bio-similar. generics are good for our industry. you might find that interesting for somebody and pharma to be making that statement, but without that release fell there is no way -- valve, there is no way to provide a reward for long-term innovation in our industry here it in a case of the drug, it is a bio-similar. it is not a generic. we worked in this category for a long time and think relatively minor differences in these proteins can manifest themselves. and have important differences. we also note that in addition to the clinical profile that we are competing with customers as well, so we think that drug remains an important treatment option for patients. with they want to be treated if they are unstable therapy, perhaps challenged if they were switching therapies before? we think it is an important option for patients and physicians. david: there was a time that johnson & johnson -- no longer, you don't to opioids -- at what point do opioids with all the benefits they offer for pain relief become -- and the damage to society overall is too great and we will have to find a different way to relieve pain? alex: it is an important issue and one we will have to work together to solve. it is also to remember the treatment of pain is a very am a very important to overall care them a so what is critical here is that we put together new rules, new regulations, new guidelines to ensure ultimately the patients are getting the treatment they need am a but also that we are putting a construct in place to make sure that we limit the kind of abuse that is taking place and a fortunate leading to bad outcomes. ? david: president trump has been outspoken on this, including the state of the union address, is he wrong?
david: let's talk about health care in the united states, 17% of gdp, increasing as a percentage, not going down. a lot of people think we have a problem and have to bend the cost curve. are they right and what can be done? alex: you mentioned home 17% of the u.s. economy come up by the way, it is personal as well and will touch all of us at some point in our lives, children, loved ones and so it will impact every one. that makes it very, very important. i think about health care now. there are a few dynamics that are challenging. one is the aging population. in the united states, 15% is 65 and older. that number could go as high as 9:42 PM25% over the next 20-30 years in something not only in the united states, but seeing it around the world. what happens as you age is that you consume or health care. actually, more than five times the for the age of 65. on top of that, and increasing middle-class around the world come a china, other developing -- world, china, other developing markets. they are demanding greater access to health care them a so all of that is putting pressure on the system. how do you keep high-quality, innovative health care that makes a difference at an affordable and sustainable price and that kind of system? so in the u.s. come up good news is that we are taking action, and whether the affordable care act, we will likely see health care reform for the next 50 years, because it is that important, that complex, and we need to continue to make changes to the system. i think the first step is we 9:43 PMhave got to an improved access for people to insurance. frankly it was unacceptable to have 45 million people in this country without access. now that we got 25 million of those covered to the aca, i think that is good. we had additional coverage for young adults, pre-existing conditions, some of those things were taking care of so those are good first steps, but now comes the hard work. how are we going to make sure we are addressing the underlying cost writers and make the system move towards an outcome or an episode of care based approach or reimbursement? how do we improve quality measures, taking a holistic approach that does not lose focus on the patient? david: something has to give. you can't have everything. one of the things with the aca, and it accomplished a lot, when we were told more people were going to have it and it was going to cost less money, that does not add up. 9:44 PMyou have to say no to somebody someplace along the line. where should we be saying no to more people? david: number one, we need to try to keep people healthier. we have to work on the demand side. we know that so many things that affect cardiovascular disease, diabetes, even certain cancers, are significant impacted by the way we live our lives. if we make sure we drink responsibly, watch your diet, stay mobile, keep moving. that can have a big impact right upfront on a certain condition. number two, make sure that unnecessary care is eliminated. how many diagnostics we do where there is not strong data and evidence that demonstrate his needed but can be defensive medicine them or we have a billing system that encourages overutilization? number three, what other drivers of costs. ? 9:45 PMwhat about end-of-life care, the does each stage, that are demanding on the system, and had reform specialized care units around those to do a better job? those the things we need to do. david: what about pharmaceuticals? it is not a big portion of health care costs, but it has been driving it up and grows faster than other costs. why do drugs cost so much? alex: it is complex, but over all pharmaceutical products have been a major contributor to the fact that people have had a 30-40 years onto lifespans, whether cardiovascular disease, oncology, we are living longer and dying later and finding more and more tears every day. the majority of those improvements can be attributed to pharmaceuticals, so when you look at overall health care expenditures, pharmaceuticals make up 14%, and that has been consistent over the last 20 years. you look at the rate of increases, it is also consistent. 9:46 PMin fact, going for it it is an incredibly exciting time because we are moving from just treatments and palliative care to actual cures, things like hepatitis c, the promise of curing something like hiv, and so keeping that in mind, and unfortunately because of persistent today, sometimes the out-of-pocket portion of the payment is born of more and more by the patient. they feel more that expense, but it is important to put it into perspective relative to the overall benefit being provided and the overall health care service as well. david: president trump has been outspoken on this, including the state of the union address, saying we have to do something about drug prices. is he wrong? alex: we need to do something about drug prices, but in a way that ultimately does not restrict new innovation, does not restrict appropriate treatments divided to patients, and also does not restrict 9:47 PMinnovation come up because if we don't innovate and find the next breakthrough for alzheimer's disease, if we don't find better treatments and cures for things like type 2 diabetes, the costs of caring him and frankly the impact on her country productivity, let alone families, is going to be dramatic. david: what if anything can come should the government do about this? let's put aside regulation. alex: we have to simplify the system. we have a complex system with multiple layers of distributors and other intermediaries, and simplifying that system is important to him and some of that is in place based on the regulation that exist. number two, we need greater transparency. the more transparency, at johnson & johnson we issued a transparency report that talked about are pricing policies about our commitment going forward, and that is one of the wonderful things in the web-based world we 9:48 PMlive in today with where you can see what are the different prices available, making sure we are taking the kind of approach is very important. david: what is your approach to johnson & johnson and the federal government? early on after president trump was elected, he brought ceos in it felt like every morning, meeting in the west wing. in fact, you were one. there was a lot of hope on the part of the business community that this will be a different president and will work closely with the business community. the that work in retrospect? it is important for alex: industry to be talking to the government. having a relationship and understanding how important they are as a customer and stakeholder, it is critical. i've had the opportunity to work with many presidents in different administrations, and it is only by sharing those ideas, developing an understanding, developing appropriate partnerships and other areas, that we can work collaboratively and solve some of these big issues we have been 9:49 PMtalking about during the interview here today. look, i would expect that to continue. with this administration, there was a lot of outreach early on. there has been issues we have had to manage along the way, but in the end it is incumbent on all business leaders to engage in a positive way to bring about positive change. david: what happened with the council. i was on the air when it dissolved. we had ken frazier from merck pullout, and one or two others been the white house issued an announcement that it has gone away, and we heard from you and 2-3 other ceos that it unraveled. what happened in retrospect? alex: there was a lot going on, and it starts with the fact that there was a realization that transpired at the time there were unacceptable. there was broad alignment command and by the way there were several councils, manufacturing, strategy -- 9:50 PMdavid: alex: this is in the wake of charlottesville. there was a sense that the best thing doing was to dissolve posted -- both of them and move ford independently. david: does that mean you continue to talk with the president and senior people? it's important to have some communication back and forth. alex: yes, we continue to have conversations, whether the fda or other regulatory agencies, of course. for a company like johnson & johnson, we are the largest health-care company representing so many different interests. we think it is fight we stay engaged in an appropriate way. david: does the white house listen to advice? let's talk about trade. our trade wars good for johnson & johnson? alex: we want a trade environment that is collaborative. we operate on a global stage and make sure we have regional trade -- reasonable trade guidelines in place. it does not mean we should not be revising and updating, but let's make sure we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. we build on some of the constructs, recognizing that these are important partners for us as part of an overall global economy.
david: you have a very big company here. do everything about whether it should be broken up? ? 9:52 PMdavid: we talked earlier about president trump and drug prices. let's talk about the government in a different way. some specific lessee that have no doubt affected johnson& johnson, tax cuts. how good were they for johnson & johnson? alex: it is critical for us to remain competitive. we think where our tax rate was at 35% versus which are seeing around the globe. 9:53 PMnumber two bank, create an artificial artifact about how you deploy capital lead to things like inversions and other behavior that i don't think strategically or in the long-term financially smart, and so to address it, get on it, level the playing field, to make it so we can be agnostic about where we deploy will encourage investment and make us more competitive. david: has ceo of johnson & johnson, how do you decide to deploy that increase cash? alex: we are redeploying that in research and development. at the end of the day, the most important thing we can do is innovate. , to come up with that extreme and that will help patients, and we do that through research and development. last year, we invested 10.5 billion dollars in research and development and applied another $35 billion through mergers and acquisitions, which has to do with innovation and bringing things alive. having better flexibility, better ability to move that capital around now, not only good for johnson & johnson, but 9:54 PMgood for the united states. david: does that include acquisitions? you have a chinese one involving biotech that you made. are you looking for other deals like that to expand your scope? alex:alex: in fact, 50% of the time we source our innovation externally. we think that is healthy. there are a lot of great ideas. science and technology is happening at a fast pace and there is no way you can do 100% at that in-house. by building connections and by having the expertise, by constantly arguing with academic institutions and the venture community, companies, startups, being able to source that early, and access clinical development, regulatory and commercial capabilities of johnson & johnson, that's how you take a neutrogena, a remicade, a contact lens that literally may be of few million dollars and create billion dollar platforms. 9:55 PMdavid: johnson & johnson has a great balance sheet. you have a lot of cash. at what point do you need to deploy that cash, and can you constructively? alex: it is great having that kind of fortress balance sheet we have. to think we have 55 consecutive years of dividend increases, 30 four consecutive years of operational eps increases and still have a triple-a credit rating is an important story and frankly something that we think is evidence of the discipline and the thoughtful way we run the business. as we look forward fundamentally, we don't think our strategy will change. we are always looking for innovation and technology and are disciplined about the way we do it. we look at the other trade-offs we might have a particular time. we think that will stay consistent, but we no longer have the artificial constraints we had before. david: at what point you feel like it has to go back to the shareholders? alex: the beauty about johnson & 9:56 PMjohnson and the way we run our business is we come up first of all, we want to invest for the long term. that means research and development at a healthy rate that suits our competition and makes us competitive. number two, it is about our dividend to shareholders depend on, and we benchmark that and know that pensioners and other funds come and they look at that very carefully as indicative of their confidence in the business long-term. number three, we look at how we deployed to business development and mergers and acquisitions, but we do that in a very disciplined way. and last but not least among we have gone through all those, then we take a look at things like why backs, and the beauty about johnson & johnson is we can do those thing simultaneously for the reasons i mentioned earlier. david: you have a very big company here. do ever think about whether it should be broken up? alex: we challenge ourselves every day come out of business models, our fundamental strategy. we believe being a large, diverse health care company is in the best interest of our shareholders and stakeholders for the long run. david: is it too early to have some sense of what you would like to leave behind when, i'm sure many years from now, you move on? alex: i think it is way too early. the worst thing a ceo can do early on is to try to say what your legacy will be. it is important to roll up your sleeves, get in, and try to make a difference, but in the long run i know my legacy will be determined by how did i do in living up to the value set forth in the credo. david: thank you so much. alex: yeah, yeah, terrific. great having you guys.
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Mar 22, 2018 | National Programming
By PCN (PCN)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742382?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e
Rough Transcript: well we only have about five minutes left so i do want to touch on a couple other issues. you mentioned earlier opioids 6:53 AMbeing a problem in the state. does your campaign have a plan to try and help the opioid cris? well scott spoke really eloquently about this and he helped form the york county heroin task force back a couple of years ago. scott has an astounding statistic that, i don't want to misquote this, so you can call in if i got this wrong, but we collected as a commonwealth, 3 million pods pharmaceuticals drop off in the drop off boxes around the commonwealth last year. three million pounds. so we have. and there's so much blame to go around that it's not even worth casting blame. i read a fantastic book which i would recommend to you and to anyone who's interested in this issue called dreamland. and it really paints a picture for how we got to this point in time, this crisis, this opiate cris that's gripped so many. really, the whole country. but places like pennsylvania and ohio and west virginia in particular. so it took us a long time to get into this mess. 6:54 AMand i think what everyone needs to understand and accept is it's going to take us a long time to get out of this mess. there is no silver bullet for fixing this. i think it starts with a recognition that we do not need to be prescribing and i'm not a physician, but we do not need to be prescribing really hardcore narcotics for every ache and every pain. chronic pain in particular. there's a new study out that we don't need to be prescribing opioids for chronic pain and really more for pain. so how we hold our physicians not accountable, but we ask our physicians to be part of the solution. we look at our pharmaceutical companies. i know they're being sued by everybody at this point. the attorney general and certain municipalities. but the real solution and i think this is why it's going to take so long is our family dynamic here not only in pennsylvania, but across our country has really broken down. and when families are struggling and parents aren't able to be there for their kids and children then get into trouble with this. 6:55 AMit's a cycle of addiction and a cycle of really a downward spiralhang government. it's going to take private industry. it's going to take our faith based organizations to all come together and work holistically to really try to reverse the trend here because it's, i mean, there are communities in pennsylvania i've traveled with that is just everywhere i go, i talk to the district attorney. and the very first question i ask of the district attorney. and unfortunately i talk to the coroner as well in a lot of these counties because there were a lot of these dinners and events and the stories that they tell just are heartbreaking. heartbreaking. by the way, i give all elected officials credit for trying to tackle the issue and i'm not going to sit here and tell you that we have the right plan, that we have the only plan. we understand the challenges here. we understand what a huge drain this is on our economy, but much mo ihaeun whua liar l ones and bankrupting families. and there was an article in the paper this past weekend of what families are doing to try to get their sons and daughters into counseling and addiction treatment. pulling all money out of the 401k, taking loans against the house. people are losing their homes trying to take care of this issue. so we need to do a lot more to support these families.
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Mar 21, 2018 | Little Rock, AR
By KTHV (CBS)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742377?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e
Rough Transcript: its our mission to educate and to look for solutions to the drug addiction cris were not the only ones with the desire to in drug addiction a group of arkansas cities and counties is suing drug companies alleging they are causing the opioid epidemic and tease bill evans michael aaron is here to help break down that lawsuit michael lawsuit claims the sixty five name defendants misrepresented 11:05 PMthe benefit of opioids in the cities and counties want those defendants primarily drug companies to pay for plan to solve arkansas opioid epidemic. today we stand together against the opioid epidemic outside the state capital wednesday city and county leaders announced their latest effort in the war on drugs. there is all for arkansas will be an arkansans coming together and while have they arkansas has the second highest prescription rate in the country with just under one hundred fifteen prescriptions written for every one hundred residents in the state meanwhile drug overdose death continue to sor were seeking a remedy for arkansas seventy two of arkansas seventy five counties along with fifteen in the state had filed a lawsuit in crittenden county circuit court one hundred ninety five additional city support the suit which names sixty five defendants most of them drug companies the alleges they misrepresented the benefits 11:06 PMand risks of opioid its counties and cities to hold people they leger responsible for the arkansas tokyo to make to account for the epidemic and to pay cleanup attorney jerome temple use representing counties in city says the goal was to collect enough money to develop and implement a plan to combat the epidemic as it stands right now its is likely in the buildings are starving for resources were starving for unity and arkansas drug director kirk lead says this lawsuit comes a time of great urgency as absolute area but i believe it's going to get worse before it gets better thats we thats the urgency of trying to do everything we can. everybody needs to be educated on this everybody needs to make the difference tonight janssen pharmaceuticals inc one of the companies named in the suit is defending its marketing and promotion of its drugs as quote appropriate and responsible all right michael thank you president trump is calling the opioid epidemic the crisis next door highlighting just how common this problem is and how close you could be to it without ever knowing the white house is asking people to share their stories with addiction and recovery right now cris next door got ga
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Mar 22, 2018 | Little Rock, AR
By KATV (ABC)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742387?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e
Rough Transcript: in the united states, on average, there have been over 42-thousand fatal overdoses a year. channel 7's nick popham reports on the rise in prescriptions and drug misuse in arkansas that's prompting nearly the entire state to fight back in the courtroom. arkansas is one of the leading in opioid percriptions and misusage. "we're at the forefront of a national epidemic." with opioids affecting communities across the natural state, some leaders and legal analysts met about five months ago with the idea of trying to find a way to combat this growing issue. "the real message is what can we do about this epidemic." nearly half a year of work resulted in the group, opidoid justice for a united arkansas, to file a lawsuit against companies they say are responsible for this epidemic. on the capitol steps, with members of law enforcement from around arkansas standing in support, city and government leaders shared their support of this legal action. "the over perscribing and the misinformed perscribing is directly related to bad information provided by our prescribers about the safety of opioidsthemselves." "if this lawsuit is successful, the people that caused it will be helping to solve it." state drug director kirk lane says he hopes this will make the much needed difference. "if we fail, we'll be the first generation that has not left a better place for the next generation." 50 drug manufacturers, and a handful of distributers, pharmacists and retailers. 72 of arkansas' 75 counties are a part of this lawsuit.
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Mar 22, 2018 | Tri-Cities (TN-VA), VA
By WCYB (NBC)
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33742388?token=cb69dac9-41c2-49cb-a01d-1023a5a0387e
Rough Transcript: lawsuits over the opioid epidemic are complicating efforts in nashville. tennessee attorney general herbert slatery says the extra lawsuits are complicating his efforts to fight the epidemic nationwide. slatery filed motions to intervene in the tennessee lawsuits.. claiming legal issues with the cases and the use of outside attorneys. but... other lawyers don't agree. they say slatery is attempting to undermine their litigation. slatery's office is leading a 40-state coalition investigating opioid manufacturers and distributors.
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