Oxycodone pills are widely prescribed as a pain reliever but are highly addictive afp_tickers
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–This content was published on 03 May 2021 – 04:32 PM
(AFP)
US Medicine Manufacturers and Distributors Face Million Dollar Lawsuits for Encouraging Opiate Addiction During Trial Opened Monday in West Virginia; one of the states most devastated by this epidemic.
Large companies, including Purdue Pharma – the pioneer in bankruptcy of OxyContin -, the AmerisourceBergen distribution chain and the CVS pharmacy network, are accused by the City of Huntington and its neighboring counties of pouring highly addictive pain relievers into the state and feeding the widespread addiction and overdoses that still persist.
More than 400,000 people have died of overdoses in the United States since the early 2000s when manufacturers of prescription drugs, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, began to be sold in pharmacies with few controls.
The state of West Virginia has the highest addiction rate in the country, and overdose deaths are nearly three times the national rate.
“Between 2006 and 2014, manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids flooded the state of West Virginia with 1.1 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills,” the lawsuit states.
One of more than 3,000 similar actions filed in the country, Huntington’s became the focus of efforts to make companies pay for the social and medical costs of the addiction epidemic.
A lawsuit filed in Cleveland, Ohio, failed to route a national court settlement and the focus shifted to Huntington.
In the Cleveland case, the main defendants – McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and Teva Pharmaceuticals – reached an agreement with the plaintiffs to award $ 260 million to two counties.
That settlement prevented a federal judge from taking the case, which could have been a model for lawsuits from other cities, counties, and Native American groups. The amounts claimed were in the tens of millions of dollars.
Manufacturers and pharmacy chains accuse doctors of over-prescribing these remedies, which, in turn, created a black market that operated for 15 years until early 2015.
Yet the federal government prosecuted, jailed, or fined hundreds of doctors, pharmacies, and manufacturers for their meager controls on the sale of opiates.
Since the tightening of control on legal opiates, many of its addicts turned to illegal heroin and fentanyl, which prolonged the epidemic and the outlook worsened with the lockdowns ordered by COVID-19.
The US disease control agency estimated that some 90,000 people died from overdoses last year, of which nearly three-quarters were attributed to opiates.
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