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Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report - 4/13/18
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Judge schedules trial in massive opioid lawsuit
Apr 12, 2018 | The Hill
By Peter Sullivan
A federal judge in Ohio has set a trial date for part of a massive combined lawsuit against drug manufacturers and distributors over the opioid epidemic. -
Opioid trials to begin in 2019 as settlement is also pushed
Apr 12, 2018 | Associated Press
By Andrew Welsh -- Huggins & Geoff Mulvhill
A federal judge with an audacious plan to settle hundreds of lawsuits filed by local governments against the drug industry over the destruction wrought by prescription opioid painkillers has altered his course. -
Federal judge in Cleveland wants to speed along opioid settlements
Apr 12, 2018 | Crain’s Cleveland Business (OH)
By Scott Suttell
A federal judge in Cleveland has set an aggressive schedule for settling hundreds of opioid-related lawsuits. -
Opioid Lawsuits for Cleveland, Cuyahoga and Summit County Scheduled for Trial in Early 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | ClevelandScene (OH)
By Vince Grzegorek
In December 2017, the U.S. court system brought the nearly 400 lawsuits filed against opioid manufacturers by cities, counties, states and Native American tribes together under Multi-District Litigation and dropped it all in the courtroom of federal judge Dan Polster in Cleveland. -
Northeast Ohio Opioid Lawsuits Could Go To Trial In 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | Ideastream
By Nick Castele
The federal judge in Cleveland overseeing hundreds of opioid lawsuits has told some local governments in Northeast Ohio to get ready for trial. -
Polster Sets Aggressive Discovery Schedule, Slating Opioid Trial for March 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | Law.com
By Amanda Bronstad
With lawyers at an impasse over settling the national opioid litigation, a federal judge in Cleveland has set an aggressive discovery schedule that includes going to trial on March 18 of next year. -
First trial against drug makers, distributors blamed for opioid crisis set to start in 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | New York Daily News (NY)
By Andrew Keshner
The first trial to challenge drug makers and distributors since the recent opioid crisis began is set for next year. -
Overdose Antidote Is Supposed to Be Easy to Get. It’s Not.
Apr 12, 2018 | New York Times
By Annie Correal
In 2015, when they unveiled the city’s plan to battle opioid-related deaths, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, said that from that day on, New Yorkers would be able to get the overdose-reversing drug naloxone at participating pharmacies without a prescription. -
Drug executives to testify before Congress about their role in U.S. opioid crisis
Apr 12, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Katie Zezima and Scott Higham
Current and former executives with the pharmaceutical companies that are accused of flooding communities with powerful prescription painkillers have been summoned to testify before Congress about their role in the U.S. opioid epidemic. -
We scorned addicts when they were black. It is different now that they are white. (Opinion)
Apr 12, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Petula Dvorak
We have been here before — a raging epidemic of addiction that destroys lives, families and communities. -
Congress Confronts Zuckerberg Over Facebook Opioid Sales
Apr 12, 2018 | Addiction Now
By Topher Avery
On April 11, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg faced questions about illegal opioid sales on the social media site during his second day of Congressional testimony. -
How Congress can address the opioid crisis (Opinion)
Apr 12, 2018 | The Dallas Morning News (TX)
By Brendan Miniter, Jim Mitchell and Jay Caruso
Each day, opioid abuse claims hundreds of lives. It's a devastating crisis that has shattered families and communities across the country. As a doctor and chairman of the subcommittee on health on energy and commerce, U.S. Rep Michael Burgess, R-Pilot Point, is in the midst of hearings to develop legislation to address the medical and social issues of opioid abuse. Burgess met with members of the editorial board to offer some insight. -
‘Pop-up’ memorial near White House highlights opioid crisis
Apr 12, 2018 | WTOP (DC)
By John Domen
For the next week, there is what can be best described as a “pop-up” memorial on the White House Ellipse. Titled “Stop Everyday Killers,” it’s meant to highlight just how severe the opioid crisis is in America. -
Opioid patient groups prefer to take Big Pharma’s money than getting Congress to act. (Opinion)
Apr 13, 2018 | The American Spectator
By Mytheos Holt
The opioid epidemic, and the rapidly increasing rash of high drug prices, are the twin deadly sins of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Any serious pro-patient policy analyst in Washington will likely acknowledge this. The responsibility of companies like the makers of Oxycontin for the spread of opioids throughout vulnerable communities is a virtually uncontested fact, as are their continuing efforts to avoid being held to account. -
City enters national opioid lawsuit against pharmaceutical groups, county likely won't
Apr 12, 2018 | Michigan Live (MI)
By Taylor DesOrmeau
Joining roughly 50 other Michigan cities and counties, the Jackson City Council is pursuing a national lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors. -
Lawyer urges Ionia County to join opioids statewide lawsuit
Apr 12, 2018 | Ionia Sentinel-Standard (MI)
By Dick Hoekstra
Mark Bernstein from the Sam Bernstein Law Firm in Farmington Hills urged the Ionia County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, April 10, to join a lawsuit to recover costs the county has accrued due to the opioid epidemic. -
Bar Buzz: At least 14 counties suing opioid industry
Apr 12, 2018 | Minnesota Lawyer (MN)
By Staff
At least 14 Minnesota counties have filed suit against manufacturers and distributors to recoup the costs of dealing with the opioid epidemic. -
Keene Joins Communities Seeking Payout From Drug Firms for Opioid Abuse
Apr 12, 2018 | New Hampshire Public Radio (NH)
By Britta Greene
Keene is the latest in a string of New Hampshire cities to sue pharmaceutical giants over their alleged role fueling the opioid crisis. Nashua and Manchester have filed similar lawsuits, as have hundreds of communities across the country. -
Carroll County Commissioners mull joining lawsuit against pharma watchdogs
Apr 12, 2018 | The Conway Daily Sun (NH)
By Daymond Steer
Alarmed by a "mind boggling" spike in crime, the Carroll County commissioners on Wednesday seemed tempted to join a lawsuit that Strafford County is proposing to seek damages from watch dogs that were supposed to be keeping tabs on the pharmaceutical industry. -
Whatcom County joins legal battle against opioid companies
Apr 12, 2018 | Associated Press
By Staff
The Whatcom County Council has voted to join a widening legal battle against makers and wholesalers of prescription opioids, saying they have contributed to a public health crisis. -
Magic Valley counties join lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Apr 12, 2018 | Twin Falls Times-News (ID)
By Gretel Kauffman
At least four Magic Valley counties are joining a nationwide lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, while two others are considering it.... -
Bossier City considers suing opioid makers
Apr 12, 2018 | Shreveport Times (LA)
By Sarah Crawford
The City of Bossier City will consider filing a lawsuit seeking reparations for costs allegedly incurred while dealing with the local effects of the nationwide opioid crisis. -
44News at 5
Apr 12, 2018 | Evansville, IN
By WEVV (CBS)
Video Link: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/34208303?token=dd5d3faa-39e4-4a8d-b623-273f94c7ced3 -
KIRO 7 News at 5AM
Apr 13, 2018 | Seattle, WA
By KIRO (CBS)
Video Link: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/34214886?token=dd5d3faa-39e4-4a8d-b623-273f94c7ced3
MDL
Commentary & FYIs
Midwest (MI, MN)
Northeast (NH)
Northwest (WA)
Northwest (ID)
Southeast (LA)
Broadcast Media Coverage
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Judge schedules trial in massive opioid lawsuit
Apr 12, 2018 | The Hill
By Peter Sullivan
A federal judge in Ohio has set a trial date for part of a massive combined lawsuit against drug manufacturers and distributors over the opioid epidemic.
Judge Dan Polster on Wednesday set a March 2019 trial date for cases from three of the cities and counties that are suing drug companies. Those cases would be the first of hundreds brought under Polster’s review to see a trial and could serve as “bellwethers” that help both sides test the waters.
The cases are being closely watched to see if they produce a settlement that forces changes meant to fight the opioid epidemic. Polster said in January that he wanted to take actions that would stem the tide of the crisis.
Polster said Wednesday that while he wants a settlement, the companies have “asserted forcefully that they cannot reach final settlement without litigating certain matters,” according to Reuters.
Scheduling a trial will help “address this impediment,” he said.
Polster said in January that “my objective is to do something meaningful to abate this crisis,” according to USA Today.
“I’m confident we can do something to dramatically reduce the number of opioids that are being disseminated, manufactured and distributed,” he said. “Just dramatically reduce the quantity and make sure that the pills that are manufactured and distributed go to the right people and no one else.”
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Opioid trials to begin in 2019 as settlement is also pushed
Apr 12, 2018 | Associated Press
By Andrew Welsh -- Huggins & Geoff Mulvhill
A federal judge with an audacious plan to settle hundreds of lawsuits filed by local governments against the drug industry over the destruction wrought by prescription opioid painkillers has altered his course.
Cleveland-based Judge Dan Polster issued an order Wednesday scheduling three Ohio trials for 2019 — a shift from his earlier plan to try to work out settlements.
In his order, the judge says the parties have made "good progress" and notes that lawyer in the case were asking for a litigation track in addition to settlement talks. The hope is that holding some trials can help resolve some of the thorniest common issues in the cases.
The nation's opioid crisis killed 42,000 Americans in 2016 with the death toll rising even as patients are being prescribed fewer opioid painkillers. The crisis is complicated. Many people becoming addicted to prescription opioids before switching to heroin or deadlier synthetic drugs such as fentanyl; some start with illicit drugs.
Polster wants to forge a deal on business practices and funding to reverse the crisis, which has hit hard across the country but has particularly ravaged communities in Appalachia. The first trials will be in lawsuits from Cleveland and the Ohio counties of Cuyahoga and Summit.
Getting there could be even more complicated than the landmark $206 billion settlement in 1998 between four companies and attorneys general for 46 states and territories. In the federal case, nearly 500 local government entities are also suing. Defendants include drugmakers, distribution companies and companies that manage pharmacy benefits for most Americans.
A spokesman for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, said the company would not comment on the step toward a trial. The company and others in the industry have been pushing to have lawsuits blaming them for the crisis dismissed.
Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, is happy to have been selected for one of the first trials, said County Executive Armond Budish.
"The opioid emergency has hit Cuyahoga County and northeast Ohio hard — as hard as any part of the country," he said. The county said it will work with the judge, Cleveland and Summit County going forward.
The settlement talks involve lawyers for a group of about 40 states that are conducting a joint investigation but have not yet sued and other state governments that have sued but in state rather than federal courts. The federal government is also deciding whether to join the plaintiffs.
While cigarettes had been known for decades to cause cancer, prescription opioids are approved by federal regulators and prescribed by doctors.
Any opioid settlement would likely include changes to practices in the drug industry as well as money to fund treatment and to cover some of the government costs associated with the crisis. How to divide up that money could be contentious, too, potentially setting up battles about how much should go to treatment programs and law enforcement efforts and how much should be used to cover costs of the crisis taxpayers have already incurred, from buying a drug that reverses overdoses to the cost of extra ambulance runs and funding child welfare systems being deluged with children of parents with substance use disorders.
Polster has allowed the three major drug distribution firms — AmerisourceBergen Drug Company, Cardinal Health, Inc. and McKesson Corporation — to share sales information with one another to work on the settlement.
Also, the federal government has begun sharing with the other parties data about opioid shipments. Also this month, the Justice Department asked to help with the settlement talks.
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Federal judge in Cleveland wants to speed along opioid settlements
Apr 12, 2018 | Crain’s Cleveland Business (OH)
By Scott Suttell
Reuters reports that U.S. District Judge Dan Polster picked three lawsuits by municipalities and counties in Ohio "to be the first cases against drug manufacturers and distributors to face a jury in the sprawling litigation." He wants the first trial to take place in March 2019.
From the story:
Polster, who is overseeing at least 433 lawsuits largely by cities and counties, has been pushing for a global settlement and has invited state attorneys general with state court cases or probes not before him to participate in those talks.
But roadblocks have emerged, and Polster in a ruling on Wednesday, April 11, said the companies have "asserted forcefully that they cannot reach final settlement without litigating certain matters."
He said his scheduling order was intended to "address this impediment."
The lawsuits accuse the drugmakers of deceptively marketing opioids and allege that drug distributors ignored red flags indicating the painkillers were being diverted for improper uses. Defendants include opioid manufacturers Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson , Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Endo International Plc, and drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp. They have denied wrongdoing.
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Opioid Lawsuits for Cleveland, Cuyahoga and Summit County Scheduled for Trial in Early 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | ClevelandScene (OH)
By Vince Grzegorek
In December 2017, the U.S. court system brought the nearly 400 lawsuits filed against opioid manufacturers by cities, counties, states and Native American tribes together under Multi-District Litigation and dropped it all in the courtroom of federal judge Dan Polster in Cleveland.
MDLs gather a whole bunch of similar cases and streamlines them through one court after which they'd all share rulings — what documents the defendants need to provide, who must sit for depositions, rulings on various motions and evidence — and then the cases return to the state where they were initially filed for actual trial. But judges presiding over MDLs also have a fair amount of latitude and, in this case, Polster almost immediately told both sides to begin settlement talks. The judge has a long reputation for crafting settlements in lieu of lengthy and expensive trials.
His Quixotic hopes of speedily orchestrating a multi-billion dollar settlement that would hold Big Pharma accountable for its role in the opioid crisis and address solutions to the public health epidemic initially rubbed most people involved the wrong way. That changed, a bit, as Polster laid out an impassioned plea in January.
"This is not a traditional [case]," he said. "What's happening in our country with the opioid crisis is present and ongoing. I did a little math. Since we're losing more than 50,000 of our citizens every year, about 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we're meeting.
"And in my humble opinion, everyone shares some of the responsibility, and no one has done enough to abate it. That includes the manufacturers, the distributors, the pharmacies, the doctors, the federal government and state government, local governments, hospitals, third-party payers, and individuals. The federal court is probably the least likely branch of government to try and tackle this, but candidly, the other branches of government, federal and state, have punted. So it's here.
"So I don't think anyone in the country is interested in a whole lot of finger-pointing at this point, and I'm not either. Just dramatically reduce the quantity, and make sure that the pills that are manufactured and distributed go to the right people and no one else, and that there be an effective system in place to monitor the delivery and distribution. Because sadly, every day more and more people are being addicted, and they need treatment."
In March Polster announced that while progress had been made the "parties reported important and substantial progress on several fronts, but also identified various barriers to a global resolution." While settlement talks continue, Polster said the sides agreed to use a limited litigation track, which basically means a few of the lawsuits go forward with discovery, motions and trials. It allows lawyers to see how judges and juries react to their arguments.
The first of those limited trials are scheduled to begin in March 2019, Polster said in an order this week. They will include the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Summit County. Discovery and depositions will proceed until then, and the trial date may be delayed or scuttled altogether if a settlement is reached.
Additional trials involving cases from Michigan, Florida, Alabama and others are being considered, but dates haven't been set yet.
Polster also this week ordered the DEA to release nine years of data on prescription drug sales for six states. Those numbers will not be made public.
The next settlement conference is scheduled for May 10.
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Northeast Ohio Opioid Lawsuits Could Go To Trial In 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | Ideastream
By Nick Castele
The federal judge in Cleveland overseeing hundreds of opioid lawsuits has told some local governments in Northeast Ohio to get ready for trial.
U.S. District Judge Dan Polster set a trial date for March 2019 for lawsuits brought by Summit County, Cuyahoga County and the city of Cleveland. The order comes as settlement talks continue.
Like the hundreds of other governments in the case, the local plaintiffs accuse drug companies of misrepresenting the risks of opiates—something the companies deny.
Polster has said he wants a settlement that helps abate the addiction crisis. In a court order, he wrote that the parties in the case say a settlement is more likely if they can also litigate some claims. This could be one of a few so-called “bellwether trials.”
Polster also ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to turn over nine years of drug sale data for Ohio and other states. The DEA had already begun a more limited disclosure—but this is far more expansive. A protective order bars public release.
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Polster Sets Aggressive Discovery Schedule, Slating Opioid Trial for March 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | Law.com
By Amanda Bronstad
With lawyers at an impasse over settling the national opioid litigation, a federal judge in Cleveland has set an aggressive discovery schedule that includes going to trial on March 18 of next year.
In his first case management order, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of the Northern District of Ohio on Wednesday identified which opioid cases would move forward with discovery under a “litigation track,” with the goal of getting the parties closer to settlement.
Polster, who is overseeing more than 430 lawsuits brought primarily by cities and counties against opioid manufacturers and distributors, set the trial in three cases brought in Ohio, including a lawsuit by the city of Cleveland. He also ordered briefing on motions to dismiss based on “threshold legal issues” in six other cases in the states of Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, West Virginia and Florida, including those brought by Florida’s Broward County, the city of Chicago and the Alabama attorney general. Native American tribes and hospitals also would have cases included.
Paul Hanly of Simmons Hanly Conroy, co-lead plaintiffs counsel in the opioid litigation, said the order drew largely upon a discovery plan put forth by the plaintiffs attorneys—including which cases to litigate.
“The ligation is national in scope,” he said. “And sooner or later, the various laws of different states are going to apply, so we picked those states because there may be some particular issues of state law he wants addressed and, secondly, those are communities that have extremely been hard hit. Not that there are any communities where this is not a problem, but those are particularly hard hit.”
Polster also expanded his previous order requiring the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to turn over to plaintiffs lawyers certain data from a database that tracks opioid sales.
“Discovery of precisely which manufacturers sent which drugs to which distributors, and which distributors sent which drugs to which pharmacies and doctors, is critical not only to all of plaintiffs’ claims, but also to the court’s understanding of the width and depth of this litigation,” he wrote in a Wednesday order.
The orders follow Polster’s decision last month to allow some discovery in the opioid litigation. The judge previously was focused entirely on settling the cases.
The discovery orders, however, don’t indicate that Polster has switched gears on settlement talks. He has scheduled a settlement conference for May 10 and, on Monday, added five more lawyers to the settlement table who represent retail chain pharmacies such as Walmart and Walgreens.
On Tuesday, he also also ordered the defendants to pay up for their 50 percent share of costs associated with paying for three special masters. Hanly said the total monthly bill for the special masters is hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We the plaintiffs have timely paid our 50 percent, in fact we pay our 50 percent on the very day that we receive the invoices, and apparently the defendants have not,” he said. “We thought that was somewhat amusing.”
Lawyers and spokespeople for the defendants, which include Purdue Pharma, which is headquartered in Cranbury Township, New Jersey, and McKesson, which is based in San Francisco, either did not respond to requests for a comment, or declined to comment.
Rulings on motions to dismiss could influence lawyers and judges in lawsuits in state courts, where most attorneys general have sued opioid defendants. In fact, Polster said attorneys general in other states could file amicus briefs in the Alabama attorney general’s case and appointed one of the settlement masters, Cathy Yanni, to oversee coordination with state court cases.
“Certainly, other states would be paying attention whether they deem it precedential or not,” said Rhon Jones, head of the toxic torts practice at Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, who represents Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall in his opioid case.
He said the expanded order on the drug database, called the Automated Records and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS, is “100 percent helpful.”
“It’ll have information about the pills, who distributed them, who they went to, how many,” he said. “In my mind, this is fantastic news because it really goes hand in hand with his order on case management because you’re attempting to clarify what has been done and what hasn’t been done and by whom.”
Department of Justice lawyers initially balked at providing the database, even as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted the federal government would pursue legal action against opioid makers. Polster ordered the DEA to turn over the database, but limited the data to what could be on Excel spreadsheets—generally, identifying the manufacturers and distributors that sold 95 percent of all opioids.
In Wednesday’s order, Polster said the plaintiffs still did not know which manufacturers sold what types of pills to which distributors.
“In any given case, therefore, the plaintiff still cannot know for sure who are the correct defendants, or the scope of their potential liability,” he wrote.
He ordered the DEA to provide by April 20 more data for the six states at issue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has asked to be involved in settlement talks.
“After evaluating applicable federal statutes, the federal government’s numerous other opioids efforts and its statutory authority to recover funds when the United States has paid for or provided medical treatments, the United States has determined that it can best assist the court in this litigation as a ‘friend of the court,’” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney James Bennett, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland, in an April 2 motion. “The United States’ substantial financial stake in combating the opioid epidemic has implications for the proper allocation of any monetary settlement of the claims asserted in the multidistrict litigation.”
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First trial against drug makers, distributors blamed for opioid crisis set to start in 2019
Apr 12, 2018 | New York Daily News (NY)
By Andrew Keshner
The first trial to challenge drug makers and distributors since the recent opioid crisis began is set for next year.
Cleveland Federal Judge Dan Polster scheduled a March 2019 trial where Cleveland, its surrounding county and another Ohio county will argue manufacturers made false representations on the dangers of painkillers while distributors turned a blind eye to suspicious activity like large orders.
Polster is the judge tasked with overseeing the mass of federal cases on which companies should be held liable for the nation’s opioid crisis, if at all.
In his ruling Wednesday scheduling the cases, Polster said the sides have been making progress in settlement talks. But Polster said the parties think a settlement is more likely if there are trials looming.
“We’re very pleased by Judge Polster’s very imaginative and forward-looking strategy,” attorney Paul Hanley Jr., one of the plaintiff-side point people in the wide-ranging federal cases, told the Daily News.
There are a number of New York State counties making similar arguments about drug maker liability, and those cases are pending before a Suffolk County Supreme Court judge.
New York City also filed a similar lawsuit in January against opioid prescription drug makers and distributors.
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Overdose Antidote Is Supposed to Be Easy to Get. It’s Not.
Apr 12, 2018 | New York Times
By Annie Correal
In 2015, when they unveiled the city’s plan to battle opioid-related deaths, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, said that from that day on, New Yorkers would be able to get the overdose-reversing drug naloxone at participating pharmacies without a prescription.
“Anyone who fears they will one day find their child, spouse or sibling collapsed on the floor and not breathing now has the power to walk into a neighborhood pharmacy and purchase the medication that can reverse that nightmare,” Ms. McCray said, with the mayor by her side.
But three years later, an examination by The New York Times has found that of the 720 pharmacies on the city’s list of locations that provide the drug, only about a third actually had it and would dispense it without a prescription. The list is used on the city’s website, the NYC Health Map, the Stop OD NYC app and when someone calls 311.
Phone calls placed to every pharmacy on the list last month found compliance with the program to be spotty, at best.
In the Bronx, which is battling a surge in heroin use and where more people died of opioid-related overdoses than in any other borough in 2016, only about a quarter of the more than 100 pharmacies on the list had the drug and followed the protocol. Requests for it were often met with bewilderment.Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGEOnce It Was Overdue Books. Now Librarians Fight Overdoses. FEB. 28, 20181 Son, 4 Overdoses, 6 Hours JAN. 21, 2018What Is Naloxone and How Does It Stop Opioid Overdoses? APRIL 6, 2018
“Can you spell that?” said a pharmacy worker at a Rite Aid on Featherbed Lane in Mount Eden, in one of the areas with the highest opioid-related overdose rates in the city.
“We don’t carry it,” said a pharmacy worker at a Rite Aid on Westchester Avenue in Mott Haven, another such neighborhood.
Some pharmacy workers inaccurately said that only the person in need of the drug could buy it, and then only with a prescription. “Are you having an overdose? You can’t buy it for someone else,” a pharmacy worker said at a Walgreens in Bronx Park, another area with a high overdose death rate. “If it’s for someone else, they would need to get a prescription.”
Activists on the front lines of the crisis were alarmed by the findings. “It’s shocking and upsetting,” said Van Asher, who runs daily operations and the syringe exchange at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in the Bronx. “That’s akin to if I were a diabetic and I went to pick up my insulin and they didn’t have it,” he said. “It’s a lifesaving drug.”
The importance of having naloxone available was made clear just last week, when the United States surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, issued a national advisory recommending that more Americans carry it and learn to use it — the first advisory from the surgeon general in more than a decade.
Naloxone comes in either an injection or a nasal spray commonly known by the brand name Narcan. New York City officials are engaged in what the city’s health commissioner calls a “full-court press” to get the drug to the public, and since last July, more than 70,000 naloxone kits have been distributed to the police, health care providers, homeless shelters and community-based organizations. When the mayor recently announced the city would spend an additional $22 million a year on anti-opioid initiatives, bringing annual funding for its HealingNYC program to $60 million, he said some of the extra funds would go toward increased training and distribution of naloxone.
But that did not mean pharmacies should be neglected, Mr. Asher said. “People might go to pharmacies who would never go into a needle exchange,” he said. If they were told they needed a prescription or had to wait for the drug, they could grow discouraged and might not have it when they needed it. The consequence?
“It’s the loss of a loved one,” he said. “Plain and simple.”
Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, called the situation “unacceptable” and said that City Hall had instructed the health department to immediately contact all the participating pharmacies.
The drug was hardest to find outside Manhattan, The Times found. This winter, a woman in her 40s named Rebecca tried to buy naloxone in Brooklyn after learning that a friend was bingeing on prescription painkillers. (Rebecca asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her friend’s privacy.) “I’ll just throw it in my work bag and I’ll have it wherever I go,” she recalled thinking.
She pulled up the city’s map on her phone, and a number of pharmacies in Downtown Brooklyn came up. At the first Duane Reade she visited, when she asked for naloxone, “I had to repeat it a couple of times,” she said. “They were nice enough but they said they didn’t have any in stock.”
At the next store on the list, another Duane Reade, she had no better luck. “He just said, ‘Nope. We don’t carry that.’ I went around the corner to a CVS and got the same story from them. The pharmacist said I was one of three people who had ever come to ask for it. The lead pharmacist popped her head up and said, ‘Is everything O.K.? Is this an emergency?’ ”
“They have these giant billboards in the subway,” she added, referring to the city’s public awareness campaign featuring posters of people who saved someone’s life using naloxone. “You’d think there would be some follow-through.”
The program was created with the idea that anyone, including minors, could walk into a participating pharmacy and leave with the drug, under what is known as a standing order: Pharmacists were to use the city health commissioner’s name, Mary T. Bassett, in place of a prescribing physician’s. They were to show the customer how to administer naloxone and bill their insurance. (Initially, Rite Aid and some independent pharmacies enrolled; the chains CVS and Walgreens, which owns Duane Reade, later announced their own standing orders, increasing the number of pharmacies on the list.)
In response to queries about the availability of the drug, Dr. Bassett said of the pharmacies, “They are learning, as we are.” She added: “We want everyone to be able to walk into a pharmacy and get naloxone.”
According to the health department, if a pharmacy on the list did not have naloxone in stock, but offered to order it, they were considered to be meeting the program’s guidelines. If a pharmacy enrolled in the program required a prescription, however, that was a mistake.
Dr. Bassett said that in addition to contacting stores on the list, the department would send workers to as many as 800 independent pharmacies in neighborhoods with high rates of overdose deaths.
To determine how readily available the drug is, The Times placed calls to all 720 pharmacies that the city said were taking part in the program over a one-week period in March. At about 270, naloxone was in stock and no prescription was required; roughly 90 more had it in stock but required a prescription.
At the other 360 or so pharmacies, naloxone was not available. Most pharmacists said it was out of stock, citing low demand, but could be ordered. But dozens said their store did not carry the drug. Several locations on the list, which was last updated in January, had nonworking numbers.
There was also widespread confusion among pharmacy workers about dispensing protocol, including whose insurance should cover the drug. Visits to pharmacies around the city revealed that signs and pamphlets about the drug were rare.
In at least one case, confusion over prescription requirements has had serious consequences.
This winter, a man overdosed outside a Rite Aid on Richmond Avenue on Staten Island. “A man ran in. He started screaming, ‘Someone give me Narcan!’ ” said a customer named Lisa, who asked to be identified only by her first name. “They said, ‘We can’t give it to you without a prescription.’ He said, ‘There’s a guy dying in the parking lot!’ They said they were not allowed.”
Lisa went outside and waited for an ambulance with other bystanders. “The guy was totally lifeless. He was just lying there,” she said. Workers at Rite Aid confirmed the episode.
The Rite Aid was on the city’s list of locations that provide the drug. A spokeswoman for the chain, Ashley Flower, said, “Naloxone can be dispensed without a prescription at all New York Rite Aid pharmacies. As it relates to this incident, we are looking into the matter.”
It was not clear what happened to the man who overdosed.
After queries from The New York Times, the chains Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens confirmed that naloxone was available without a prescription at all locations in New York and said they were reviewing procedures with personnel at all New York City locations.
The city’s initiatives around naloxone have been credited with helping to curb the number of overdose deaths, which appear to have leveled off last year after sharply rising in previous years. But those working close to the crisis say there’s still much work to be done.
Karen Carlini, the associate director of Dynamic Youth Community, a state-funded drug treatment center in Brooklyn, said the city made it seem simple to get naloxone at pharmacies. “It’s not,” she said.
On a recent evening, dozens of parents gathered at the center’s headquarters on Coney Island Avenue, where they held hands, recited the center’s philosophy and shared stories.
They included Beth Kennedy, who started keeping naloxone on hand when one of her twin daughters was addicted to painkillers and heroin. When Ms. Kennedy recently visited her neighborhood pharmacy — a Rite Aid in Rockaway Park, Queens, on the city’s list — a pharmacist told her that her insurance would not cover naloxone and that it would cost $150. Pharmacy workers later said it was “probably better” to have a prescription in the patient’s name if they were going to order it.
Joseph Rushford, from Brooklyn, said he had stashed a kit in a bureau at home and had to use it one day last winter when his 23-year-old son overdosed. “He was in the front room, dying on me,” he said. When Mr. Rushford tried to replenish his supply at a pharmacy, he was discouraged by the high cost and muddled information and left empty-handed.
Many parents who have the drug keep it a secret, said Cindy San Jose, from Queens, whose daughter went into treatment as a teen. “Shh,” said Ms. San Jose, raising a finger to her lips. “We hide it because we don’t want to encourage them.”
“We hide it at home,” she said. “Because we don’t want them to know. We don’t want them to overdose.”
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Drug executives to testify before Congress about their role in U.S. opioid crisis
Apr 12, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Katie Zezima and Scott Higham
Current and former executives with the pharmaceutical companies that are accused of flooding communities with powerful prescription painkillers have been summoned to testify before Congress about their role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.
The hearing, scheduled for May 8 before a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight panel, has the potential to be a defining moment for the pharmaceutical industry, much like when tobacco executives were called to testify before Congress in 1994. The pharmaceutical executives are expected to face tough questions under oath about why their companies pumped so many highly addictive pain pills into West Virginia and other states, fueling what has become the deadliest drug crisis in U.S. history.
Since 2000, the epidemic has killed 200,000 people — more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War.
“It’s time to directly question the leadership of national and regional drug distributors whom we have probed for critical information,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said in a statement.
Executives from distributors McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith wholesale drug company are scheduled to testify at the hearing next month.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has spent the past year investigating the sale of pills in West Virginia by wholesale drug distributors, which are required by law to monitor and report suspicious opioid orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). If orders and sales are not correctly reported for oversight, countless doses of potent drugs can be diverted to a booming illegal market and ultimately to drug abusers — many of whom became hopelessly addicted to the powerful painkillers.
Committee members aggressively questioned Robert W. Patterson, the acting head of the DEA, last month, asking how so many pills flowed freely and why, they said, the agency wasn’t forthcoming with information about how it handled opioids.
The panel has sent letters to all of the distributors asking for information about steps they took to keep drugs off the black market and to report suspicious orders of pills.
“This investigation is taking a hard look at troubling issues behind the surge in opioid deaths in America,” Walden said. “We expect to get answers next month from these officials about the companies they represent.”
Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson Corp. are the nation’s three biggest pharmaceutical distributors, responsible for shipping nearly 85 percent of all prescription drugs in the United States. McKesson is the fifth-largest company in the country, with revenue of more than $192 billion, according to the Fortune 500 list. Cardinal ranked 15th, with $121 billion in revenue.
McKesson said in a statement that it will “cooperate with the committee’s request.” The other companies and a trade association representing them did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post on Thursday.
The hearing also could provide more of a road map for how the powerful narcotics made their way to individual communities, some of which received massive amounts of drugs per capita. Committee members hope the hearing will shed light on specific data the companies reported to the DEA about how many pills they sent and where the pills went. That information is kept on a confidential DEA database known as the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS). The database tracks the flow of prescription painkillers from manufacturers to distributors to pharmacies.
The committee and news reports have disclosed some of the data, and it is staggering: Millions of pills were shipped to small communities in West Virginia, which has the nation’s highest rate of drug overdose deaths.
In February, the panel revealed in letters sent to the companies that McKesson and Cardinal Health shipped 12.3 million doses of powerful prescription opioids to the Family Discount Pharmacy in Mount Gay-Shamrock, W.Va., from 2006 to 2014. The town in southern West Virginia had 1,779 residents, according to the 2010 Census.
An analysis by the committee found that Cardinal Health sent the pharmacy more than 6.5 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills between 2008 and 2012. McKesson sent 5.8 million pills from 2006 to 2014. Other distributors also sold painkillers to the pharmacy, bringing the total to nearly 16.6 million by 2016.
In letters sent to the smaller distributors in January, the committee cited data showing that wholesalers shipped nearly 21 million doses of painkillers to two pharmacies just blocks apart from each other in Williamson, W.Va., a town of 3,191 on the Kentucky border about 30 miles from Mount Gay-Shamrock. The letter said that Miami-Luken sent about half of the pills.
The town received “approximately 1,565 hydrocodone and oxydocone pills for every man, woman and child” from Miami-Luken in 2007 and 2008, according to a letter sent by the committee.
In total, Miami-Luken shipped 20 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to West Virginia pharmacies from 2007 to 2012. The company was being investigated by the DEA’s Detroit office, but a program officer said his entreaties to close down the company were ignored by superiors in Washington.
“We are continuing to cooperate with the committee,” said Richard Blake, an attorney representing Miami-Luken.
The DEA ARCOS data also is being sought as part of a mammoth court case in Cleveland. Hundreds of lawsuits filed by municipalities against opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies have been consolidated in a federal court there.
The judge in the case, Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio, ruled Wednesday that the DEA must turn over transactional business data and suspicious order reports the companies filed for their activity in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia between Jan. 1, 2006, and Dec. 31, 2014.
The DEA must provide the data to Polster by April 20. Although lawyers for the defendants and plaintiffs in the case will have access to the data, it will be sealed from public view under a court-imposed protective order.
Lawmakers and lawyers think the data could show a correlation between shipments of opioids and deaths in those communities. The DEA initially fought the release of the data, but Polster rejected the agency’s arguments.
“The vast oversupply of opioid drugs in the United States has caused a plague on its citizens and local governments,” Polster wrote in his ruling. The request for the data is “a reasonable step toward defeating the disease.
Paul Farrell Jr., a West Virginia lawyer who represents plaintiffs in the case, praised Polster for ordering the release. He said the order could be a “tipping point” in the case, revealing patterns of drug shipments and deaths and how the flood of prescription pain pills fueled a national epidemic.
The information “has the potential to serve as a Rosetta Stone to decipher and understand how prescription opiate abuse evolved into a national epidemic,” Farrell said.
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We scorned addicts when they were black. It is different now that they are white. (Opinion)
Apr 12, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Petula Dvorak
We have been here before — a raging epidemic of addiction that destroys lives, families and communities.
Who was on the front line in the 1990s, when the drug was crack and the addicts were mostly black? Drug czar William Bennett. His weapon was prosecution and prison.
Today, when the drugs are opioids and the addicts are mostly white? U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, a doctor, is out there, telling the country, “We need to see addiction as a chronic disease and not a moral failing.”
Imagine President George H.W. Bush saying those words, while holding a little baggie of crack cocaine during the height of America’s epidemic in 1989.
Maybe, the war on crack cocaine would have been $1 billion in treatment programs, not $1 billion in prosecution and prison costs.
Maybe, the number of people locked up for drug crimes would not have increased by 1,000 percent in three decades.
And maybe entire communities of color would not have been devastated.
And maybe we would have a way of dealing with the current addiction epidemic in our country.
But it did not happen that way.
Bush’s surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, used his position to go after tobacco addiction and champion HIV/AIDS education. But to bring him in on the crack wars? No way.
“We need more jails, more prisons, more courts and more prosecutors,” President Bush declared in 1989, when thousands of Americans were dying from drug overdoses or in bloody turf wars.
Of course, President Trump suggested executing drug dealers at a White House summit last month. He and other Republicans have been far more sympathetic to those caught in the grip of addiction.
Adams, who works for Trump, is not waving a baggie of illegal drugs, but an injector for overdose antidote naloxone. Last week he issued a rarely used official advisory, urging people with an addict in their family, school or medical practice to learn how to use naloxone because “keeping it within reach can save a life.” (The last advisory from a surgeon general was in 2005, when Richard H. Carmona warned pregnant women from drinking alcohol.)
At the National Prescription Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta last week, Adams said that for many people, the “opioid crisis is not only pressing, it’s personal. My own brother, as many of you know, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for stealing $200 to support his addiction.”
His predecessor in the job, Vivek H. Murthy, also made the case for compassion, urging rehabilitation, not jail. Understanding, not judgment. Treatment, not prosecution.
Why the difference?
“That’s easy. They care this time because it’s whites dying,” said Jerome, 62, a longtime fixture in an alley called Hanover Place in Northwest Washington, a block that used to be one of the most stubborn open-air drug markets in the nation’s capital.
“Back in the day? It was black folks. So who cared?” said Jerome, from his motorized wheelchair.
His phone rang. “Excuse me,” he told me.
“What’s up Fatboy?” he bellowed into the phone.
“That’s my twin,” he tells me.
“I’m here with a reporter. She’s asking about back-in-the-day. You know they want to hear ‘bout what it was like, back in the day?”
He hung up with Fatboy after laughing about the irony of back-in-the-day and today, when most of the block is dominated by the construction of the Chapman Stables luxury condos, selling for $300,000 to $1 million for a unit. “At Chapman Stables, you can embrace a new style of historic living,” the promotional material promises.
“Those people will have no idea what this used to look like. It’s all about money. Money, money, money,” said Jerome, before whirring off to meet Fatboy.
The crack scourge largely stayed in the inner city. There were lots of headlines about pregnant addicts and crack babies. Even for them, prosecution was more often the solution over treatment.
Today, an average of 115 people die every day from an opioid overdose, most of them white and many in rural and suburban communities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black people are dying of overdoses too, some from heroin and others from cocaine, but you do not hear much about it.
“The black/white thing? Sure, I can go there,” said Barry B. Bell, 62, another fixture at Hanover Place. He has battled heroin addiction for years and has at least 2,000 stories about it, if you have the time to listen.
Yes, he believes America’s newfound compassion for the disease of addiction is a result of the color of addicts’ skin.
But you know what? Bell says, “So what?”
“As long as they have the programs, it’s all good,” said Bell, a graduate of many drug treatment programs. “Don’t cut the programs. They keep people alive and out of the penitentiary.”
Had President Bush spoken of addiction as an illness — rather than a crime — all those years ago, hundreds of thousands of lives might look different today.
Only now, because those dying in this epidemic look like the children and grandchildren of those in power, are we finally applying some compassion and common sense to addiction.
Too little, too late? Yes.
Infuriating? Yes.
But is it progress? Yes, at long last.
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Congress Confronts Zuckerberg Over Facebook Opioid Sales
Apr 12, 2018 | Addiction Now
By Topher Avery
On April 11, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg faced questions about illegal opioid sales on the social media site during his second day of Congressional testimony.
Representative David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, stated that Facebook was still being used as a platform to facilitate online opioid sales. McKinley remarked that by enabling the illegal sale of opioids, Facebook was responsible for “hurting people.” Zuckerberg conceded that there were numerous “areas of content” where the tech giant needed to improve regulation.
Zuckerberg elaborated on the matter, explaining that due to the sheer scale of the amount of content shared by users everyday on Facebook, it was impossible to review everything posted, even with “20,000 people” reviewing the material. According to Zuckerberg, the social media site will remove any post facilitating Facebook opioid sales it comes across, as well as any such post that is reported by users and found to violate Facebook’s terms of use during an internal review.
In the future, Zuckerberg hopes that artificial intelligence tools can be used to better monitor posts that facilitate illegal Facebook opioid sales, but for now, the social media giant relies on its content reviewers to monitor content that users of the site have flagged.
Earlier this month, the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Scott Gottlieb, tweeted that the agency would be working with ISPs and social media sites to curb the sale of opioids online. According to the April 4 tweet, which was sent the same day Gottlieb made remarks at the annual National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, the FDA intends to invite “Internet leaders” to a summit on the subject.
When asked about the remarks that Gottlieb had made the previous week, Zuckerberg replied that he wasn’t “specifically aware” of the FDA Commissioner’s remarks.
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How Congress can address the opioid crisis (Opinion)
Apr 12, 2018 | The Dallas Morning News (TX)
By Brendan Miniter, Jim Mitchell and Jay Caruso
Each day, opioid abuse claims hundreds of lives. It's a devastating crisis that has shattered families and communities across the country. As a doctor and chairman of the subcommittee on health on energy and commerce, U.S. Rep Michael Burgess, R-Pilot Point, is in the midst of hearings to develop legislation to address the medical and social issues of opioid abuse. Burgess met with members of the editorial board to offer some insight.
How did opioid abuse become such a crisis?
That's one of the things we are trying to delve into. Was it a phenomenon because a manufacturer decided to deliver a bunch of medicine to an area and then it got pushed out the doors? It bothers me that we [doctors] could have been part of this problem.
One of the very first hearings that I ever attended in the health subcommittee of the energy and commerce committee was in 2005. The issue then was why weren't doctors prescribing adequately for pain relief. Remember pain became the fifth vital sign, an indicator of quality and whether it was satisfactorily dealt with. When the Affordable Care Act came through, additional weight was put on those scorecards.
These are powerful medicines and can do a great job of alleviating pain. That's one thing that a physician should do. That was always the mantra we followed. But anytime you wrote a prescription, it was always in the back of your mind. This is a compound where habituation can occur.
Particularly for chronic pain?
Why don't we have better stuff for chronic pain? Opiates are great for short-term relief. I operate on someone, I send them home with a dozen or two dozen pills because I want them to be comfortable for that first week or ten days after surgery. But you don't just refill it, refill it, refill it indefinitely. I don't know where that occurred.
Percocet, Oxycontin or one of these compounds was standard issue. But that doesn't explain the volume of pills that have been going out. If it was just a problem of physicians, perhaps educationally, we could get a handle on that.
What else is in play?
We have another problem with stuff coming in over the transom from other countries, packages of Fentanyl, a much more potent form of an opiate, or one of its analogs. Deaths are occurring. People who mistakenly don't understand, they think, "well I've been taking this dose of pain medicine." That is a lethal dose that they consume.
I went to the international mail facility at JFK Airport. It looked like it was out of the 1930's. The FDA, customs and border patrol are the branches of federal agencies that are tasked with investigating things as they come in the country, or trying to sequester bad stuff from coming into the country. They inspect probably 1.1 percent of the stuff that comes in. It really is an astounding problem. They actually train drug-sniffing dogs to sit down and back away because if they keep sniffing they could get a lethal dose by inhaling.
How can we reduce overdoses?
Allowing people to carry Naloxone. I've thought that for a long time. Why not make Narcan [an FDA-approved nasal form of Naloxone for the emergency treatment of opioid overdose] much more readily available? It ought to be an over-the-counter item. Put it down in front with the Tootsie Roll Pops.
So what's the spark that caused this problem to expand?
I don't want this to sound the way it is going to sound. I do think the Affordable Care Act made a difference. Not being critical, but the expansion of Medicaid may have played a role in the crisis. There is no question that if you just look at the numbers, Medicaid patients have a higher likelihood of falling into one of these problems.
When you look at the states that expanded Medicaid, that is where some of the hotspots are occurring. I'm not saying there's a cause and effect, so please don't misinterpret that. I don't shy away from criticism of the Affordable Care Act, but that is not the point I'm trying to make. This is really not a criticism of the Affordable Care Act. This is the reality that we are dealing with now. Something has happened with availability, giving people access to a prescription for a medication. Was it that we were not paying enough attention to the low health literacy of the population that might be now affected? Something has happened.
We've been told our leadership is anxious for us to get them something perhaps in late May. I think quite likely that it will be so bipartisan that it will be able to pass on the floor really without a great deal of difficulty on the House side.
It will encompass enforcement and research into the development of alternatives that are nonaddictive, particularly in the realm of chronic pain. Treatments will have to include not just different medications to treat pain, but medication-assisted treatment for people who have become habituated or are addicted.
Although it is not really the jurisdiction of our committee I also recognize when I talk to employers, the beef is they can't find people to hire. The labor participation rate, in general, is at lower levels than it should be, and one of the barriers to getting people to work is they can't pass a drug test. How do we bring them back into the workplace? You talk to any employer and they'll tell you there's a problem finding people to apply. But after someone applies, can they pass the rigors of the prescriptions-employment physical which will include a screen for opiates?
What can the federal government do about that?
Perhaps there is some way to provide a safe harbor for someone who is complying with medication-assisted treatment so they would still be employable, even though they are on a maintenance medication to keep them from relapsing into full-on opiate addiction. Just expanding the availability of medication-addicted treatment facilities is one of the things that we've looked at.
There also has been bipartisan frustration with not being able to get data from the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] about the delivery of stuff, you know retail pharmaceutical outlets where it is clearly the delivery of a compound is far in excess of what the community can consume.
One of the big fights I've had over the years was over putting a prescription drug monitoring program in at a national level so that when a doctor writes a prescription, he or she can know whether this patient has filled multiple prescriptions at multiple pharmacies within the recent past. It was authorized but never funded. The appropriators always felt it was better to go the law enforcement route and to provide funding for the Department of Justice to prosecute people. As a physician, I'd like to know if I'm filling a prescription for someone, is this the eighth prescription they've filled in the last two weeks? That's important information. I'd like to know that.
Isn't there any progress on this front?
State prescription drug monitoring programs have come a long way in the last 10 years, but people can cross state lines. We heard from a pharmacist in southeastern Missouri who said every Friday night he would see a car full of people from Georgia, each with a prescription, same doctor, same medicine, same amount — they can't all have the same affliction at the same time. He maintains that he doesn't fill those because he's suspicious of them. But I suspect that some pharmacists will. These are all cash transactions, so they're probably good for the pharmacy's bottom line.
The prescriber needs to know that more than one person is prescribing this medicine. There's nothing more dangerous than two doctors writing orders for addictive drugs. If you don't know what the other one is doing, you're going to overdose someone.
Any surprises so far from the hearings?
One of the starker things we found out was that we made money available for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and it didn't go anywhere. It was never dispensed to the communities. We give you a million dollars, you have to tell us where these grants are going. One of the representatives from West Virginia could only find two grants with small dollar amounts to his state, which is the No. 1 target of opiate addiction. It's not that the agency was purposely doing something bad, but there is a lot of inertia.
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‘Pop-up’ memorial near White House highlights opioid crisis
Apr 12, 2018 | WTOP (DC)
By John Domen
For the next week, there is what can be best described as a “pop-up” memorial on the White House Ellipse. Titled “Stop Everyday Killers,” it’s meant to highlight just how severe the opioid crisis is in America.
The first thing you’ll see when you walk in is a little locker-sized memorial that was created for a mother named Felicia’s son Louis. It has pictures, art work he created while in elementary school, including a letter that told her how much he loved his mother.
There is also his football jersey and pictures of him playing sports. It was a high school football injury that got Louis the prescription that started his addiction.
“We’ve brought a lot of her son’s personal effects to help people identify ‘this is your next door neighbor, this is your nephew, your friend.’ how much it affects everyone,” explained Jenny Burke, a senior policy director with the National Safety Council.
“This just helps put that personal face on the issue.”
Next to that sits what looks like a half-open medicine cabinet, several of them right next to each other in a row.
One of them probably looks just like the one in your bathroom on the surface, down to the way you left it this morning. But inside the open end are statistics about the impact prescription opioids are having on the country, and in the mirror next to it, a chance for you to look at yourself and consider the numbers.
“Medicine cabinets are in pretty much every household in the United States,” said Burke. “You can see yourself in the medicine cabinet so you know you have just as much of a chance of having this issue as anybody else.”
At the end you can also pick up a bag — postage paid already — that lets you safely dispose of any prescriptions you might not need anymore.
The part of the memorial meant to put things in perspective is the Wall of Pills.
It’s really three walls in a U-shape, and from afar it just looks like 22,000 or so white dots on a black wall.
“When you look at all the little dots on the wall, it kind of makes your eyes hurt,” noted Burke.
Which is the point.
It’s supposed to alarm your senses if you’re not willing to look closely and see the faces and the humanity at stake here. But if you do take the closer look at those 22,000 pill shaped dots, you see the faces.
“Then you really see this is a life, and this is a life that was needlessly lost to something that we can prevent,” said Burke.
“We do have 50 different faces on the pills that represent the demographics of the people that we lost to overdose,” she added. “Unfortunately we can’t put every single face, we really wanted to help people see that these are all individual lives.”
In Chicago, the National Safety Council has a machine engraving pills with a new face. It’s done every 23 minutes, which is how long it took for someone new to die from an overdose in 2015.
The numbers have jumped significantly since then.
At the end of the memorial is a board that lets you remember anyone you know who died from an overdose. Every few seconds a new name, with another number, is shown.
“It will really help them place their own stamp on it, but also helps other people see that this is growing and this isn’t stopping. It’s 22,000. It has doubled in the last year,” Burke said.
“And if you look at fentanyl and all the other ways people are dying of opioids, it’s not just prescription opioids, that number has tripled. So you know there’s a lot of people whose lives are being lost to this issue and so we really want people to understand the vastness of it, but understand that we get their personal story.”
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Opioid patient groups prefer to take Big Pharma’s money than getting Congress to act. (Opinion)
Apr 13, 2018 | The American Spectator
By Mytheos Holt
he opioid epidemic, and the rapidly increasing rash of high drug prices, are the twin deadly sins of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Any serious pro-patient policy analyst in Washington will likely acknowledge this. The responsibility of companies like the makers of Oxycontin for the spread of opioids throughout vulnerable communities is a virtually uncontested fact, as are their continuing efforts to avoid being held to account.
What has remained stubbornly confusing for those of us who desire that reckoning, however, is the extent to which lawmakers have been willing, or even eager, to let Pharma off the hook. Surely, many of their constituents are sick and need cheaper drugs, or may have been swept up in the opioid crisis. How are the patients so mistreated by the pharmaceutical industry being not only completely ignored, but facing even worse policy going forward?
How, for example, has Congress failed to pass the CREATES Act yet, which would empower generic drug companies to force their brand name competitors to compete once their patents run out? How have the nonsensical practices whereby Pharma extends those patents, and thus keeps drug prices sky high, not been reformed? How is it that even a small, patient-centered program like the 340B drug pricing program, which trades access to Medicare and Medicaid for Pharma’s offering drugs at cheaper prices to underserved populations, is not bulletproof against the slings and arrows of Pharma lobbyists in Congress? Yes, granted, Pharma spends a lot of money on lobbying, but one would think shame would kick in or, failing that, the groups representing patients would push back at some point… right?
Wrong. According to a bombshell report published by Kaiser Health News, the situation is far, far worse than this. In point of fact, Pharma’s lobbying, while substantial, is not some sort of shield against the well-meaning critiques of scrappy patient-oriented groups. Rather, they complement each other, because the patient groups have been bought off by Pharma. As a result, patients have no voice in the Washington policymaking process. The people who are supposed to be their voices are already bought and paid for.
“Six drugmakers, the data show, contributed a million dollars or more to individual groups that represent patients that rely on their drugs,” Kaiser Health News writes. “The database identifies over 1,200 patient groups. Of those, 594 accepted money from the drugmakers in the database.”
And then, as if to make the point even more explicitly, they add, “Notably, such groups have been silent or slow to complain about high or escalating prices, a prime concern of patients.”
The groups afflicted by this pay for play mentality are varied, and in many cases, disturbing for how famous and respected they are. For example, the American Diabetes Association is implicated, as is the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which received nearly half a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies in 2015. That is an awful lot of pink ribbons.
Fortunately, Kaiser Health News has put all the data into a single database, known as Pre$scription for Power. Over $116 million in these sorts of donations has been tracked already, to nearly 600 patient advocacy groups. Those are the kinds of numbers that should give lawmakers serious pause whenever they receive recommendations on policy from those same groups.
To be clear, there’s nothing illegal about what the pharmaceutical companies are doing in this instance. But the questions about the ethics of their recipients are extremely troubling, and the idea that pharma might be deliberately buying off patient advocates to avoid being held to account for their abusive market practices should worry every American who fears one day becoming seriously ill or injured.
One thing is certain, though: It is time for Congress and the White House to cease taking the word of Pharma, or of those front groups they financially support, at face value. It is often said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and with any luck, the sunlight provided by Kaiser Health News will prove to be just that in this case. What a relief that unlike so many disinfectants produced by Pharma, this heavy dose of sunlight cost the American consumer nothing.
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City enters national opioid lawsuit against pharmaceutical groups, county likely won't
Apr 12, 2018 | Michigan Live (MI)
By Taylor DesOrmeau
Joining roughly 50 other Michigan cities and counties, the Jackson City Council is pursuing a national lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors.
With a 5-2 vote at the Tuesday, April 10 City Council meeting, the city retained law firms Weitz and Luxenberg and the Sam Bernstein Law Firm - who are representing numerous other communities in this litigation.
Councilmen Craig Pappin and Jeromy Alexander voted no.
The topic first surfaced at the March 27 council meeting, but was postponed to Tuesday to give members more time to consider the issue.
About the lawsuit
While communities across the country are entering into this lawsuit, it is not a class-action lawsuit, Mark Bernstein, president and managing partner at the Sam Bernstein Law Firm, said.
It is multi-district litigation - meaning each community files on its own and can choose to settle on its own, but evidence is heard once collectively. A northern Ohio federal court is consolidating the litigation, Bernstein said.
The lawsuit's goals are to make pharmaceutical groups change the way they do business and pay communities for the damages opioids have caused to them in recent years.
"These opioid manufacturers misrepresented the addictive quality of these drugs - in some instances went so far as saying they are not addictive or minimally addictive," Bernstein said. "And then pushed them aggressively for uses that they should never have been used for, and then stood back when they were being diverted in astonishing ways."
Other communities taking part in the lawsuit include Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Kent County, Oakland County and Wayne County.
While Bernstein argues the blame should start with pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers and distributers, groups representing distributors like the Healthcare Distribution Alliance claim they aren't the root of the problem.
"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," John Parker, Healthcare Distribution Alliance vice president, said. "Those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation."
Costs to the city
If the city of Jackson is awarded or settles for money through the lawsuit, 30 percent of the net sum recovered is split between the two law firms. Other litigation expenses and costs will also be owed.
If the city is unsuccessful in the lawsuit, Bernstein said the city won't be financially burdened.
"In 50 years, I've never collected costs from a client when we have been unsuccessful. Ever," Bernstein said. "And that applies to Weitz and Luxenberg as well."
Bernstein can't legally say he'll cover the costs of the lawsuit, he said. The city's retainer agreement, on page 66 of the council agenda packet, doesn't specify any dollar amount.
"If you collect zero, then I get zero," Bernstein said.
Bernstein and Paul Novak, managing attorney at Weitz and Luxenberg, didn't specify to the city how much it could receive. A damage team will meet with the city to tally up how much it could ask for in its claim, Bernstein said. This would take 25 to 40 hours of work from the city, he said.
Communities are asking to be reimbursed for costs like Narcan usage, emergency room visits, increased enforcement costs, opioid-related autopsies, substance abuse treatment and more. The money would go into the city's general fund.
Of the two components of the case, Bernstein said the judge seems most interested in the ruling in the case, not the monetary damages portion.
Council thoughts
If the litigation is successful and the opioid industry is forced to change its methods, the whole country would benefit, Bernstein said. Because of this, Alexander and Pappin argued the city might be best to not engage in litigation immediately.
"We can actually have that largest gain from this with having zero risk, by not participating in it," Alexander said.
Bernstein argued the solutions wouldn't be tailored to specific issues in Jackson, but couldn't answer what makes Jackson's issue unique from others in the lawsuit.
"It is true that you can do nothing and sit on your hands and be a tool of the pharmaceutical industry," Bernstein said. "It is true that you can let other municipalities lead on this. But I don't think you're doing your job as a city council if you do that, I'll just be blunt."
Other council members talked about wanting to be part of the solution.
"I just think to do nothing is a huge mistake. I want to be part of the solution," Councilwoman Colleen Sullivan said. "I want to let our citizens know that we care. It's not acceptable to see what's going on and just sit here and say we'll let someone else carry the water."
Mayor Derek Dobies was questioned for his connection to Bernstein - as Dobies received $250 last fall toward his campaign from the Bernstein Family PAC. Dobies had no part in selecting the law firm, city officials and Bernstein confirmed.
Jackson County likely won't participate
Bernstein and Novak gave a similar presentation to the Jackson County Board of Commissioners on April 3, but no action was taken.
Board Chairman James "Steve" Shotwell Jr. said there's not even a minority interest in the litigation.
"It's not the Republican way to blame big business for peoples' mistakes," Shotwell said. "I believe all the lawsuit's going to do is pay a bunch of attorneys."
Shotwell's comments echoed those from groups representing the distributors, saying this lawsuit won't fix the problem.
"The opioid problem is very diverse and complex. It's something that is going to involve treatment as well as law enforcement as well as mental treatment," Shotwell said. "It's not an easy fix. It's not a turn off the switch or collect a bunch of money from a drug company and fix the problem."
The Michigan Association of Counties has supported the litigation. The issue won't resurface with Jackson County, though, unless a commissioner asks for it to be added to an agenda.
Jackson County has seen a 32 percent increase in opioid prescriptions since 2009.
While not all opioids consumers are prescribed, Bernstein argues legal remedies get people hooked in the first place. They're only supposed to be used in end-of-life situations, cancer and short-term, high-pain situations, Novak said.
Instead, they're handed out in large doses in a swath of medical situations, Novak said.
"The conduct by these defendants is the most egregious corporate conduct I have ever observed in many, many years doing pharmaceutical litigation," Bernstein said. "And it is time for municipalities to do everything they can to hold these defendants accountable."
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Lawyer urges Ionia County to join opioids statewide lawsuit
Apr 12, 2018 | Ionia Sentinel-Standard (MI)
By Dick Hoekstra
Mark Bernstein from the Sam Bernstein Law Firm in Farmington Hills urged the Ionia County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, April 10, to join a lawsuit to recover costs the county has accrued due to the opioid epidemic.
He invited them to join his and other law firms in their lawsuit that will be assigned as many independent cases tried together once to a court in Cleveland, Ohio.
It would cost the county nothing if the case was lost. If the case was won, the county would get 70 percent of the award and the law firms would get 30 percent.
“In Ionia County in 2009, there were 65 opioid prescriptions per 100 citizens among roughly 65,000 citizens,” Bernstein said. “In 2016, there were 106 prescriptions per 100 citizens. That is a number that is about consistent across the state. Michigan is one of the top 10 worst-hit states in this crisis.”
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions filed a brief stating the staggering costs of $504 billion (or 3 percent of the gross domestic product), 25 percent of that burden will fall on Medicaid, Medicare and counties.
“For the first time, life expectancy is falling due to the opioid addiction crisis,” Bernstein said. “It’s our belief as that it’s largely a result of the misrepresentation, misuse and what I would call permissive diversion of these drugs by the opioid manufacturers and distributors.”
Bernstein said the medicines are enormously powerful, and incredibly important and valuable to many people — but only in three categories:
— In certain treatments for cancer
— For pain management in hospice or end-of-life cases
— In post-surgical treatment under direct supervision of medical personnel
“They were never meant to be a prescription after a root canal (at the dentist) or after a soft-tissue treatment at a chiropractor,” Bernstein said.
The extent of the addiction can be seen in the fact that 13 percent of people who took an opioid for eight days straight are still taking them a year later.
“These are not just allegations invented by lawyers,” Bernstein said. “These are conclusions that attorney generals in 41 states (including Bill Schuette in Michigan), the FDA, DDA and other regulatory agencies have accessed against distributors and manufacturers of opioids and have won hundreds and millions of dollars in settlements.”
Fifty municipalities and counties have already signed on with Bernstein and the other law firms. They include the cities of Detroit, Grand Rapids and Traverse City as well as Genesee, Saginaw, Macomb, Gratiot, Montcalm and Ingham counties.
They seek injunctive relief — or a change in business conduct in the sale and distribution of opioids.
The firms also seek damages and recovery of money spent by counties in public safety, court costs and addiction-related services.
“Our goal is to get taxpayer money back spent to deal with the mess that this county didn’t create but you are left to clean up and responsible for,” Bernstein said.
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Bar Buzz: At least 14 counties suing opioid industry
Apr 12, 2018 | Minnesota Lawyer (MN)
By Staff
At least 14 Minnesota counties have filed suit against manufacturers and distributors to recoup the costs of dealing with the opioid epidemic.
That information comes from Pete Orput, the Washington County Attorney. Orput, who spearheaded Minnesota’s opioid litigation, is the Minnesota County Attorneys Association’s designated liaison to the multi-jurisdictional litigation.
He supplied an updated count on Thursday, but said it is possible his numbers are already out of date “There may be more counties involved by now,” Orput said. “This was current a month ago.”
In early December, officials announced that three Minnesota counties — Washington, Mower and Ramsey — had filed suit against the opioid industry. Orput’s numbers show that, as of mid-January, 11 more had signed on.
He said he expects six more Minnesota counties to follow suit, and that several of them may have filed already. He could not confirm Thursday morning whether any others had.
Minnesota counties now known to have filed suit include Ramsey, Steele, Morrison, Olmsted, Itasca, Anoka, Hennepin, Dakota, St. Louis, Mower, Washington, Douglas, Chisago and Carver.
At least eight of those are represented by the Minneapolis-based Lockridge, Grindal, Nauen law firm. Other firms involved include Gustafson Gluek (Minneapolis); Briol & Benson (Minneapolis); Motley Rice (Mount Pleasant, S.C.); and Crueger Dickinson (Whitefish Bay, Wis.). Several Minnesota counties have more than one firm assisting in the litigation.
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, which has seen a dramatic spike in opioid overdoses among its members, filed suit in December.
The county suits seek to force the industry to halt deceptive marketing in Minnesota and to mitigate the “public nuisance” caused by rapidly accelerating addiction to both pills and — when physicians cut patients off prescriptions — street heroin.
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Keene Joins Communities Seeking Payout From Drug Firms for Opioid Abuse
Apr 12, 2018 | New Hampshire Public Radio (NH)
By Britta Greene
Keene is the latest in a string of New Hampshire cities to sue pharmaceutical giants over their alleged role fueling the opioid crisis. Nashua and Manchester have filed similar lawsuits, as have hundreds of communities across the country.
In a complaint filed this week, lawyers for Keene claim a long list of pharmaceutical companies – including Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and others – ignored the drugs’ known risks and pushed them aggressively.
“This case is about one thing: corporate greed,” the complaint states. “Defendants put their desire for profits above the health and well-being of the City of Keene, its residents, and consumers.”
The city is seeking damages for the costs associated with fighting the epidemic locally. That includes expenses for policing, drug and addiction counseling programs, and EMS costs.
Other similar cases nationwide have been consolidated for review by a court in Ohio.
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Carroll County Commissioners mull joining lawsuit against pharma watchdogs
Apr 12, 2018 | The Conway Daily Sun (NH)
By Daymond Steer
Alarmed by a "mind boggling" spike in crime, the Carroll County commissioners on Wednesday seemed tempted to join a lawsuit that Strafford County is proposing to seek damages from watch dogs that were supposed to be keeping tabs on the pharmaceutical industry.
Commissioners decided they will hold off on making a decision, however, until they can get the key details, such as the names of the organizations Strafford County plans on suing. They plan to discuss the idea again next week.
County Administrator Ken Robichaud said he attended a New Hampshire Association of Counties meeting last Friday and Strafford County officials invited other counties to join them in a lawsuit.
"As we know, we are in an opioid epidemic," Robichaud said. "They are looking at going after the watch dogs who failed with pharmaceuticals."
Robichaud said he wanted to discuss the costs to the county of the opioid crisis. He said those involve costs associated with new programs at the jail and the extra burden on the County Attorney's Office, which prosecutes drug crimes. He invited County Attorney Michaela Andruzzi to talk about it at the meeting.
Andruzzi said in 2017, her office filed 389 cases in Superior Court, and of those, 226 were drug related. A case is a set of criminal charges against a defendant arising from a single criminal episode.
In 2015, the County Attorney's Office had 88 drug-related cases, which means there has been a nearly a 160 percent increase since that time.
"We're seeing a lot of fentanyl," said Andruzzi of a potent opioid. "Shockingly, we're seeing some carfentanil, which is even more deadly. Heroin we're seeing less of because it's being replaced by the fentanyl."
She said her overall case load increased 144 percent from 2015 to 2017.
Commissioner Mark Hounsell (R-Conway) said the trends are "alarming," and Commissioner David Babson (R-Ossipee) said the increase from 88 to 226 drug cases is "kind of a mind-boggling statistic."
Hounsell said the crisis has cost the county money. Criminal charges include police work, case preparation, court and incarceration in some cases. The county also sends money to White Horse Addiction Center in Ossipee.
He said the pharmaceutical industry is the biggest drug pusher in the country.
"There's a watchdog group that's supposed to watch them, and they didn't watch them very well," said Hounsell.
Hounsell added that the state of New Hampshire, with help from the counties, sued the tobacco industry and got a settlement but the state didn't share a dime with the counties.
Babson asked who the watch dogs were, and Robichaud said he wasn't sure but he thinks the defendants would be some sort of regulatory agencies.
"I don't know who these people are," Robichaud said. "This was just sprung on us on Friday."
After trying to find the answer on his smart phone, Robichaud said the Federal Food and Drug Administration is the watchdog.
Hounsell replied they had better confirm that with Strafford County.
In a phone interview after the meeting, Robichaud said Strafford officials made the request verbally. He planned on asking them for more information before the next meeting on April 18.
Chair Amanda Bevard (R-Wolfeboro) made a motion to join the lawsuit.
The Sun asked the commissioners if they were really going to join a lawsuit without finding out who it was being filed against.
Babson said he was conflicted about it and said the commissioners had scant details about what was being proposed.
Hounsell agreed and said the motion should be changed to table the vote until next week's meeting on April 18 to give Robichaud time to ask Strafford County for more details.
Hounsell's motion passed 3-0.
"I think we should do it (the lawsuit) but I don't think we should do it without our eyes wide open," said Hounsell.
Governmentoversite.com camera operator John Ruckenbrod said that the "watch dogs" are merely accomplices to the drug industry's initial crimes.
"The industry overall is one of the greatest killers on this planet earth," said Ruckenbrod.
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Whatcom County joins legal battle against opioid companies
Apr 12, 2018 | Associated Press
By Staff
The Whatcom County Council has voted to join a widening legal battle against makers and wholesalers of prescription opioids, saying they have contributed to a public health crisis.
The Bellingham Herald reports that county officials on Tuesday voted to join the likes of Skagit, Pierce and King counties in the fight against the opioid epidemic. The County Council retained law firm Keller Rohrback, which is also representing the other Washington state counties.
The law firm will sue the makers and distributors of opioid painkillers, including Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and other entities.
In a separate lawsuit filed in 2017, the state of Washington sued Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, accusing it of "fueling the opioid epidemic in Washington state."
The drug companies have disputed the allegations.
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Magic Valley counties join lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
Apr 12, 2018 | Twin Falls Times-News (ID)
By Gretel Kauffman
At least four Magic Valley counties are joining a nationwide lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, while two others are considering it.
Officials in Cassia, Camas, Gooding and Blaine counties have agreed to file lawsuits against companies that made and distributed painkillers, joining more than 500 other counties across the U.S. The lawsuits allege that the companies’ marketing of opioids as safe and effective for long-term use contributed to a national public health crisis, at a financial and social cost to counties.
Available data suggests that south-central Idaho hasn’t been hit as hard by the opioid epidemic as other parts of the country. But county officials point out that opioid abuse can be difficult to measure quantitatively — and that it could become more prevalent in the future.
By filing lawsuits, some commissioners say they hope to learn more about the local impacts of opioid use, support other counties that have experienced greater damages, and prepare for a possible increase in opioid abuse in the years to come.
“I think counties are probably beginning to wake up to the fact that this is an issue that is being poorly tracked in Idaho but may be moving under the radar, so to speak,” said Blaine County commissioner Larry Schoen.
Schoen said he views the benefits of joining as twofold: “Learning more about opioid use and addiction in our community, and participating in any settlement with the manufacturers.”
The four Magic Valley counties will be represented by law firms based in New York and Wisconsin, at no cost to the counties. If the lawsuit is successful, the law firms will collect a percentage of the recovery.
In a telephone meeting with Jerome County commissioners Monday, attorney Erin Dickinson of the Wisconsin firm Crueger Dickinson described the litigation as a “mass action,” rather than class action, lawsuit, as each county will need to file an individual case. Those cases will be consolidated in a federal court in Ohio.
Jerome commissioners did not make a decision on Monday whether to move forward with a lawsuit. First, they said, they want to do some more research on how the opioid crisis has affected Jerome County.
“I do not have a clue if this is impacting our county,” Commissioner Cathy Roemer said. “It might behoove us to determine that.”
Blaine County, which decided to file a lawsuit on Mar. 20, was the third Magic Valley county to do so, following Camas and Gooding in early March.
Cassia County commissioners agreed to file a lawsuit on Monday, and will sign an engagement letter next week, according to Commissioner Tim Darrington.
Darrington said the lawsuit has helped bring the issue of opioid addiction to the “forefront” of Cassia commissioners’ awareness.
“I think we have more damage to us than what we realized in the different areas,” such as costs to the health care and criminal justice systems, Darrington said. Meanwhile, he added, the pharmaceutical companies “make billions on this.”
While counties do not pay a fee to the law firms representing them, there may be some additional costs involved in researching local opioid use, Schoen and Darrington said.
Twin Falls commissioners have not heard a formal presentation on the lawsuit, but have been in contact with Dan Chadwick, former director of the Idaho Association of Counties, Commissioner Terry Kramer said. Chadwick is serving as a liaison of sorts between Idaho counties and the law firms offering to represent them.
Like Darrington and Schoen, Kramer said he suspected opioid addiction may be more common in his county than the available data would suggest.
“We don’t see tremendous amount of opioids problems here,” Kramer said. “But I think they’re coming.”
Twin Falls commissioners don’t plan to make a decision until the county prosecutor, Grant Loebs, has had a chance to do some research on the litigation, Kramer said.
“Some of the counties have done it independently as commissioners, but we would prefer to do it with the blessing of our prosecuting attorney,” Kramer said.
Lincoln County commissioners have not discussed the possibility of filing a lawsuit, Commissioner Rebecca Wood said.
Commissioners from Minidoka County did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Bossier City considers suing opioid makers
Apr 12, 2018 | Shreveport Times (LA)
By Sarah Crawford
The City of Bossier City will consider filing a lawsuit seeking reparations for costs allegedly incurred while dealing with the local effects of the nationwide opioid crisis.
Similar lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies have been filed in other jurisdictions around the country, including Bossier Parish, which filed a federal lawsuit in December. The City of Shreveport and Caddo Parish have considered similar actions.
“The opioid abuse problem poses a significant health threat to not only the country but to Bossier City,” Bossier Mayor Lo Walker said. “This proposal would enable the city to join in on national litigation at no cost in an effort to help offset added expenses sustained by the city, and subsequently the taxpayers of Bossier City, from our first responders having to deal with those addicted to opioids.”
At its next regular meeting on April 17, the Bossier City Council will consider introducing an ordinance allowing the city to enter into an agreement with several attorneys to provide legal services related to filing a lawsuit.
“This health threat has taxed law enforcement, emergency medical services, the city jail and the Bossier City court system,” the draft ordinance states.
Opioid abuse-related incidents requiring emergency services have increased in the area, but compiling exact statistics is often difficult because it’s not always immediately clear what the issue is when first responders arrive on a scene, said Jeff Watson, chief of Emergency Medical Services for the Bossier City Fire Department.
“The biggest thing for us is we respond to people that have overdosed or have the potential, but we don’t know if they have overdosed,” Watson said. “Sometimes you have clues to lead you there. We treat the symptoms — unconscious or difficulty breathing.”
To prepare for cases of opioid overdoses, a medication called Narcan, which treats a suspected overdose in the form of a nasal spray, is carried on every firetruck in the city, Watson said.
“Whenever we have somebody unconscious with respiratory distress, we go ahead and give it to them,” he said. “Narcan reverses the effects of (an opioid overdose) pretty rapidly.”
First responders in Bossier City also must undergo training and education in anticipation of dealing with opioid overdoses, Watson said.
Darren Barclay, deputy chief with the Bossier City Police Department, said an increase in opioid-related incidents contributes to an uptick in costs for the police department.
“You have the overtime response, and the additional costs from the pathologists and the coroner’s office for the autopsy, and the additional toxicology that might be something you wouldn’t normally test for,” Barclay said. “Because of the epidemic, it has been suggested we will have to increase our budget for autopsies and for the pathologists, because of the additional costs it presents.”
Barclay also noted that the risk of contact with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that can be absorbed through the skin, is an additional hazard for first responders.
“We have had training in how to be cautious in responding to that,” he said.
In the Bossier Parish lawsuit, attorneys representing the parish accuse manufacturers and distributors of "operating a continuous criminal empire in violation of federal and state law" that "engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity."
"In broad brush strokes, what is happening is this epidemic did not happen on its own," said John Young, an attorney part of the team representing various Louisiana parishes in opioid suits.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of developing a well-funded marketing scheme to spread false and deceptive messages about the benefits and risks of long-term opioid use to both doctors and patents.
The Bossier Parish lawsuit was moved from U.S. District Court in Shreveport to Ohio, where numerous lawsuits are being consolidated nationally.
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Apr 12, 2018 | Evansville, IN
By WEVV (CBS)
Video Link: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/34208303?token=dd5d3faa-39e4-4a8d-b623-273f94c7ced3
Rough Transcript: the trade association representing several opioid distributors named in a vanderburgh county lawsuit are firing back. the healthcare distribution alliance which represents cardinal health, mckesson corporation and amerisource bergen - sent a statement to 44news. it says in part - 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. those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation. last week - vanderburgh county commissioners filed a lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers and distributors for their alleged role in fueling the opioid addiction crisis.
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Apr 13, 2018 | Seattle, WA
By KIRO (CBS)
Video Link: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/34214886?token=dd5d3faa-39e4-4a8d-b623-273f94c7ced3
Rough Transcript: whatcom county is joining other cities, counties and states suing big pharma for the opioid crisis.the bellingham herald reports - the county voted to retain a law firm to sue several makers and distributors of opioid painkillers-- including purdue. several cities and counties joined the state in suing opioid makers recently.the lawsuits argue big pharma áknowingly ápumped drugs into communities ástruggling with addiction.
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