Ohio Attorney General Mike
The lawsuit, which was filed in Ross County because it is thought to be the hardest hit area in the nation by the epidemic with more than 44 opioid-related deaths in 2016, is against Purdue Pharma, Allergan, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceutical
In a statement,
“These drug manufacturers led prescribers to believe that opioids were not addictive, that addiction was an easy thing to overcome or that addiction could actually be treated by
Earl Cecil, the executive director of the Athens-Hocking-Vinton Alcohol, Drug
The Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, also known as the 317 Board, provides alcohol,
“This isn’t the first case where we’ve known corporate America were aware of the dangers of their products, and they continued to promote and sell them anyway,” Cecil said. “We, as a society, need to learn that the health of our citizens is more important than corporate profits.”
Some pharmaceutical companies, however, claim they are helping to combat the opioid addiction crisis. According to Purdue Pharma’s website, the company, which produces OxyContin, is working to combat addiction by making their products “less gratifying” to consumers.
“Purdue is acutely aware of the public health risks these medications create, especially when they are abused or misused,” a statement on the company’s website said. “Pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue, are developing innovative technologies to create opioid medications in new forms that are more difficult to manipulate, and so are less gratifying to abusers.”
Cecil said the problem doesn’t stem from how addictive the opioids are, but how they were marketed as non-addictive.
“When they produced some of the opioids that are prescribed, like OxyContin, physicians and prescribers were lead to believe it would be non-addictive,” Cecil said. “We now know that that’s not true. It’s pretty well documented that big pharma knew that.”
Despite his support for the lawsuit, Cecil said he wasn’t sure if the lawsuit would benefit Athens County, which totaled eight overdose deaths in 2015, even if it’s successful.
“If perhaps they would be successful in their actions and have a cash settlement, they’ve not shared what the use of that settlement would be,” he said.
In that previous report, Athens City-County Health Commissioner James Gaskell said even a $600 million settlement from Purdue Pharma executives in 2007 wasn’t enough to end the opioid epidemic. Gaskell instead said the responsibility of ending the epidemic will fall to the government — and taxpayers.
“It was not enough money to make a difference,” Gaskell said of the lawsuit. “Unfortunately, it’s going to fall to the taxpayer to pay for this. The federal government is going to have to get more and more involved ... there has to be more funding provided for treatment.”
