Email steve@steveariens.com 502-938-2414
Pay Attention
Special election on Sept 10 in North Carolina 9th District. We need to get Jeff Scott elected. He is a supporter of the rights of pain patients, and will carry our message to Congress. Doctorsofcourage has arranged for an interview of him on Dr. Kline’s The Doctor’s Corner show next Tuesday. Spread the word. Send this message virally to all your friends and family, especially in NC 9th District
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A lady from the FDA returned my phone call today. I spent around 17 mins with her on the phone. She was receptive and says they’ve heard from many of us, but the FDA doesn’t have much direct authority to change what is happening (she said the DEA and state medical boards are responsible for so much it). She did, however, give me a SPECIFIC ACTION we can take. In order for the FDA to issue official public statements it is usually in response to people self-reporting issues with foods, cosmetics, products, or side effects from meds, etc. (Which she said DOES include withdrawal symptoms from being force tapered AND suicides).
***She said go to www.fda.gov/medwatch. (I’ve included screenshots). Click on the red Report a Problem button. On the MedWatch Voluntary Reporting Form page, click Consumer/Patient. It will take you to the next page… where it says About Problem. Follow the prompts and tell your story if you have suffered withdrawals because of forced or rapid tapers (or cut off completely). This form also NEEDS to be filled out on behalf of anyone who committed suicide from being denied their pain meds… so please forward this to anyone you know who has lost someone because of this mess. (As well as contacting Dr. Thomas Kline, who, as many of you are aware, is also keeping a list). But this is an important step MANY of us can take to force the FDA to issue a public statement. We need to flood that page with complaints so there is an official record.
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As federal lawmakers debate policies to quash the nation’s ongoing opioid crisis, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) urged the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to ensure pain-management medication remains available to patients with chronic pain.
“I am concerned about the unintended consequences of clinically appropriate patients no longer receiving or having access to the appropriate treatment due to ongoing misunderstandings between the physician and regulatory agencies such as the DEA,” Sen. Cassidy wrote in an Aug. 28 letter sent to Uttam Dhillon, the DEA’s acting administrator.
Sen. Cassidy, a registered medical doctor, wrote that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 24 emphasized in a commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine that the 2016 Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain “have been misinterpreted or misapplied, presenting a challenge to patients with chronic pain and those who treat them.”
“There are anecdotes of patients on stable doses of opioids for years, being cut off from prescriptions (forced tapered or abandoned) due to physician misinterpretation of the CDC guidelines,” the senator wrote. “Unfortunately, these reports share that some of these patients have thereby turned to illegal opioids.”
Sen. Cassidy added that on May 9, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in cooperation with several other federal agencies, released its Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 legislated final report, entitled Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force Report: Updates, Gaps, Inconsistencies, and Recommendations.
The report emphasizes a key distinction between patients: those with chronic pain, on stable doses of opioids, in which the dose does not escalate while the patient remains under a physician’s care, and those with opioid use disorder who exhibit drug-seeking behavior, including “escalating doses, doctor shopping, purchasing illegal drugs, and resorting to criminal activity to support their lifestyle,” the senator wrote.
Sen. Cassidy requested that Dhillon answer several questions, including what instructions the DEA gives to pharmacists and physicians as they treat chronic pain patients, and if the instructions differentiate between the two types of patients, for example.
“Empowering the registrant community with instruction in best practices will serve those in need of medication who are combating pain in the acute and chronic period,” he wrot
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/opinion/johnson-and-johnson-lawsuit.html
The decision on Monday by an Oklahoma judge to fine Johnson & Johnson $572 million for its role in the state’s opioid crisis is only the first step in what promises to be years of complex litigation. In ruling that pharmaceutical marketing caused a “public nuisance” by increasing addiction and overdose deaths, Judge Thad Balkman created a strong precedent.
What this decision should not do, however, is further distort our understanding of the causes of the crisis and add to the misery of people in pain.
Drug companies like Johnson & Johnson twisted the truth about the potential risks of these medications. That caused great harm. Nonetheless, for many — including people with chronic pain or at the end of life — opioids are the only drugs that seem to work. Understanding the facts about these drugs is critical to resolving the crisis and making pharma pay for solutions that work.
The reality is this: 80 percent of those who begin misusing prescription opioids are taking drugs obtained illegally — from theft, dealers, friends, relatives, the internet or other people’s medicine cabinets, not from doctors. And nearly three out of four young people who misuse opioids have previously taken cocaine or crack repeatedly. Indeed, researchers say that prior recreational drug use is a much larger risk factor for opioid addiction than medical exposure. That is not to say that there aren’t some whose addictions begin with a prescription — but this group is a decided minority.
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This shouldn’t deflect blame from the pharmaceutical industry — as Judge Balkman’s decision suggests, misleading marketing might have helped quadruple medical opioid sales from 1994 to 2006 in Oklahoma. Where those drugs ultimately went and who got harmed, however, is a more complex story than we’ve been led to believe.
Part of the confusion comes from this: Addiction rates vary tremendously depending on factors like age, mental illness and history of use of alcohol and other drugs. Consequently, studies that exclude people with these risk factors show very low rates of addiction.
Take, for instance, the 2010 Cochrane review of clinical trials of opioids for the use of chronic non-cancer pain. Cochrane reviews are among the most rigorous and respected in medicine, intended to help physicians and countries with national health care determine the best treatments. Among the 2,613 participants who were evaluated for possible addiction, the authors found a risk that was little more than one-fourth of one percent.
When drug companies cite such studies to doctors, they aren’t exactly lying: The risk of addiction in carefully screened patients is indeed low. But the result can be to elide the differences between people who go through extensive screening to participate in a clinical trial and those who just stroll in to their general practitioner’s office.
Doctors don’t seem to be adequately screening their patients for addiction; indeed, many have received scant education on such screening in medical school and consequently often rely on stereotypes. This can mean that many doctors simply assume that the nice patients that they have been seeing for years aren’t at risk of addiction. So they might not ask unpleasant questions about possible past misuse of alcohol or other drugs.
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The result, however, is that they wind up treating a population that has a risk for addiction estimated at 8 percent to 12 percent. It is worse for doctors who deal with teenagers and young adults: The risk of addiction for them is at least double that of older people.
Further, since people who misuse drugs often deliberately seek them from doctors, addiction rates in pain practices can be many times higher than in the general population — not because the doctor has caused addictions, but because addicted people go where the drugs are.
So, yes, the pharma industry was the source for these opioids and its marketing convinced many doctors to write large prescriptions, helping to create an addiction epidemic. But it wasn’t primarily pain patients who got hooked.
The policy response, then, needs to focus on getting appropriate treatment to people with addiction — not on taking medication from the pain patients who most need it.
Today, illicitly manufactured fentanyl is causing an increasing percentage of overdose deaths. This is probably because when the medical supply of opioids began contracting, as doctors sought to reduce prescriptions, large numbers of addicted people switched to illegal heroin and fentanyl — often because they were already familiar with illegal drug markets.
Pharma must pay for its role in creating these markets. But simply cutting people off from opioids treats neither pain nor addiction. What they most need is access to effective anti-addiction medications.
To solve this problem, funds from the Johnson & Johnson settlement — as well as from any settlement with Purdue Pharma or other major manufacturer of opioids — must go toward supporting effective treatments, including providing proven addiction medications. (Johnson & Johnson is appealing the decision.)
The United States Preventive Services Task Force has just recommended that physicians screen all adults for substance use disorders — and settlement funds could also be used to support this effort, which will require improved training for doctors in dealing with pain and addiction.
The pharmaceutical industry, doctors and regulators all deserve blame for overselling and overprescribing pain medications. But now, as they reverse course, they are abandoning people in pain as well as people with addiction. If the Johnson & Johnson settlement and any future ones are to provide some measure of justice, they must help both groups.
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Researchers from Texas Woman’s University say a chemical found in a native Texas plant appears to stop pain without causing addiction.
DENTON, Texas — “See how pretty they are?” notes Camilia Maier, walking through a garden on the campus of Texas Woman’s University. “They’re very nice.”
She stops to pulls a leaf off one of the plants she was admiring. White sap starts running down the stalk.
“You see it coming out dripping?” she asks. “The chemicals in this sap – that’s what we use.”
According to Maier and her TWU colleagues, the chemicals in a plant commonly called “snow on the prairie” might lead to a breakthrough in the fight against opioid addiction.
Euphorbia bicolor is the plant’s scientific name.
Dayna Averitt, an assistant professor in TWU’s department of biology where Maier works, had previously worked in San Antonio with scientists researching new solutions to ease chronic pain suffered by military veterans.
When Averitt took her job at TWU, she heard Maier and a graduate student were researching euphorbia bicolor as a potential anti-cancer drug.
“The euphorbia name stuck with me,” Averitt said. “I’m like, ‘Why do I know that name?’ I don’t know anything about plants. I’m a neuroscientist.”
It stuck out because it sounded a lot like one of the plants her former colleagues had been researching in San Antonio.
Once Maier confirmed the plants were in the same family, they launched a powerful research project on a plant that had never been studied.
They discovered a chemical in sap from snow on the prairie appears to do what opioids do: It stops pain. But it isn’t addictive.
They injected the sap into cells and saw that nerve endings were turned off.
“We’re trying to target the signals as they make their way to the brain,” Averitt explained. “So if we can turn them off like a light switch for a long period of time, the brain doesn’t even know about it and you don’t have that pain.”
Snow on the prairie is native to our region, and it’s currently in bloom in fields across North Texas.
“It’s a relative of the poinsettia,” Maier said. “It blooms in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi.”
The sap is toxic, so it is not something that would be ingested. It would be injected into the site of the pain – so directly into an aching back or a burned arm.
Their research has been published, but they need additional funding for further testing. They hope to gain approval for clinical trials in the future.
“We need to make sure it doesn’t hurt other cells,” Averitt said. “You’re harming nerve endings, which we want to do, but we want to make sure it isn’t acting as a toxin on other cells as well.”
“You can’t help but look to the future and be excited, like maybe this could be something that could be a real breakthrough.”
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https://splinternews.com/a-dea-agent-special-apparently-convinced-a-drug-dealer-1837679254
The Department of Justice said Wednesday that a federal law enforcement agent was convicted on seven counts for actions that apparently included telling an alleged drug dealer to buy a truck and then seizing the truck for his own use at work.
Chad Scott of Louisiana, a former special agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration, was found guilty of two counts of perjury, three counts of obstruction of justice, and two counts of falsifying government records after a seven-day trial. He was suspended from his job indefinitely.
According to trial evidence, Scott convinced a Houston, Texas-based drug dealer to buy a $43,000 Ford F-150 truck. Then, as a part of his cooperation, he forfeited the truck. Scott apparently then made fake seizure paperwork, changing the location where he seized the truck, so that he could actually get away with using it as his official work vehicle.
The evidence also showed, according to the DOJ, that Scott convinced the Houston drug dealer and another drug dealer to falsely testify at a federal trial about an alleged cocaine and heroin dealer. The person was then found guilty. The court dismissed the case after learning about Scott’s intervention.
Scott and former DEA Task Force Officer Rodney Gemar were also charged with unlawful conversion of property by a government officer or employee and removing property to prevent seizure. The trial for these charges is scheduled for October 2019.
Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski said, “Chad Scott violated his sworn commitment to serve the public and uphold justice, dishonoring the special trust that we place in each of our federal law enforcement agents.”
Two other deputies at the Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana Sheriff’s Office were found guilty in the investigation as well. Karl Emmett Newman pleaded guilty to unlawfully carrying a firearm and misappropriating money that the DEA confiscated. With services like Palmetto State Armory providing easy access to guns where you can buy 9mm ammo online. The regulation laws have become more stricter. Johnny Domingue pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and misappropriating money that the DEA confiscated. Rodney Gemar was charged with Scott
“Scott’s actions were selfish and placed an unnecessary stain on an otherwise stellar agency. We commend our partners at the DEA for their unprecedented level of cooperation throughout this investigation,” said FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Anthony T. Riedlinger.
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VETERAN SUICIDE WATCH: THE EVER-MOUNTING COSTS OF A WORLDWIDE CONTAGIONSince 2017, the number of such deaths in South Korea has gone up. Troop morale has gone down. Angry, conscripted men are calling for women to join their discontented ranks. Gay men and women report harassment, bullying, assault and, according to Amnesty International, criminalization (per Article 92-6 of the military code). For the past four years, more officers than soldiers have committed suicide.
What preventive steps has the Ministry of National Defense taken, so far? Talks…calling for suicide prevention education and policy meetings.
It’s the same in America. In July, the U.S. Pentagon reported its highest number of veteran suicides in 17 years. The latest grim headlines involve “parking lot suicides” committed on official Veterans Administration grounds in America. Every day, 20-22 men and women who have served in the American military— whether active duty, the Reserves, the National Guard, or veterans— kill themselves. And in other nations around the world, comparable reports suggest the epidemic is endemic to the post-war veteran experience.
What should they be talking about, then, those experts convening end of August at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, in Nashville, Tennessee, for a Suicide Prevention Conference? What innovations will be unveiled by some 2000 “experts” from the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for this meeting billed as “One Mission. Many Roles.” #BeThere.
They were not there six years ago, when Daniel Somers, 30, machine gunner of 400 combat missions in Iraq, commented on the daily suicide count, “Is it any wonder? … Where are the big policy initiatives?” Those words, taken from his 2013 suicide note, were memorialized on Gawker, a one-time American celebrity and media blog.
They were not there for John King, 28, the Humvee runner in Iraq who hung himself back home in New York four years after his return.
They most certainly were not there for Justin Bailey, age 27, an Iraq War Marine who died of an overdose of VA- prescribed medications — while in treatment at the West Los Angeles branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs, its largest branch, where I worked for fifteen years.
One of these three men, I knew; two I did not. All three shared a common, and deadly, cocktail of combat-related crises—physical pain, opiate addiction, severe post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Said King’s grieving mother: “Kids are fighting for your country, [but] they’re not getting the help they need.”
Indeed. At the start of the “Forever Wars,” we tried to look away. But we can’t, anymore — not since a VA staffer telephoned Somers’ wife to set up an initial mental health appointment … weeks after his death; not since John King’s VA mental health specialist pronounced him no longer a danger to himself; not since the late Justin Bailey’s case managers somehow failed to make sure that he show up for his initial PTSD evaluation.
Impressive, first-term Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) gave her first speech from the Senate floor on this deadly theme, evoking Somers. John King’s family was honored at a July 4 artillery ceremony in Battery Park, New York. One year after his death back in 2007, Congress passed the Justin Bailey Substance Abuse Disorders Prevention and Treatment Act. Twelve years ago.
Now, get ready for this: the VA is promoting “gold standard” innovations in the field of suicide prevention: 1) A computer algorithm that scours patient records, tracking medications, treatment, traumatic events and overall health so as to retrieve the names of veterans in the community deemed most likely to die by suicide within a year. So far, some 250 veterans have reportedly been stopped in their suicidal tracks; 2) A first-ever, nationally standardized template for suicide risk assessment, rolled out at the start of 2019, based upon “high-quality, evidence-based tools;” 3) Measurement-based care– self-report forms completed by veterans, designed to highlight symptoms of PTSD; 4) The Mission Act, implemented in June of 2019, ensuring private sector care for veterans who live too far from a full-service VA facility, among other factors; 5) A nationwide crisis hotline, manned 24/7; and 6) A nationwide army of Suicide Prevention Coordinators.
These measures are good—but not good enough. They cannot compensate for compassionate care: those lauded, lengthy suicide risk assessment could detract precious time from direct patient care; those self-report checklists, in the hands of veterans, can’t possibly distinguish true PTSD victims from those chasing compensatory funds. The Mission Act may fast-track appointments for veterans but most private sector clinicians aren’t trained in the intricate protocols for treating PTSD and TBI. The Veterans Crisis Hotline can be cumbersome. You could die waiting.
I remember the 25-year-old Japanese-American, an Army veteran, who casually ruminated about hanging himself from a tree; he was immediately hospitalized. I remember the double-amputee smuggling heroin in his prosthetic legs, selling it on VA grounds, then screaming, when caught, “I’m gonna kill myself!” Another hospitalization.
You have to be there, to feel it. You have to see it, to know it. You have to look into the patient’s eyes to ferret out fakery from tragic fact.
What’s called for is systemic change, in America and elsewhere. If Congress were to fund those 49,000 nationwide VA jobs that remain empty. If the Department of Veterans Affairs were to hasten its laborious, labyrinthine hiring system. If patient charting requirements were streamlined. If clinicians could concentrate on the patient, rather than the computer chart, before their eyes.
Boots on the ground are needed to win the hearts and minds of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq (or so they insist). The same could be said for both patients and staff on the frontlines of federal government. Measurement matters, but so do the human brain, and heart. Anyone who has been talked out of suicide — or who has directed such talks — can attest to that. More clinical boots on the ground in countries will be the only way to win the war against veteran suicide.
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It would seem that everyone is going APE-SHIT over this judge’s ruling.. This judge is so “full of himself” that he believes that abt ONE-HALF BILLION DOLLAR fine to J&J will quickly solve the opiate crisis in OK. His ruling is going to go NO WHERE… first of all he denied J&J of a trial by jury…. and this ONE MAN has made all the determinations from the start of the trial to the final ruling.
His ruling of invoking a fine on J&J did not surprise me and if anyone looking at the entire “dog and pony” show should not be surprised either… It is no more – or less – than more fodder to help keep the opiate crisis in the headlines and this judge’s ruling goes thru the appeal process.
So here we have a SINGLE PERSON who is part of our judicial system – who have been “fighting” and/or “managing” this war on drugs for nearly FIFTY YEARS and spending close to TWO TRILLION DOLLARS fighting this war … with no end in sight.
It should not take a “rocket science” to get this verdict to be granted an appeal to a higher court and on to the Supreme Court.
J&J was found guilty of supplying raw opiate material to many pharmaceutical manufacturers … who in turn produced legal opiate medication under the oversight of the FDA and within the production quotas as established by the DEA. Exploring the industrial landscape, the implementation of safety swing gates industrial
emerges as a crucial measure, ensuring secure access and compliance with safety standards in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities.
That is like blaming all the corn farmers in Iowa for all the high fructose corn syrup that many blame our country’s obesity and diabetes epidemic/crisis. After all Iowa is a major source of CORN.
All involved with perpetuating the opiate crisis….. are so desperate that they are now putting forth data based on 2006 -2012 – a seven year period and the volume of legal opiate Rxs PEAKED in 2012 and have been declining every year since… and the DEA has reduced the production quotas abt 50% in the last 3 or so years… So .. docs can’t prescribe and pharmacist can’t fill … opiates that are not produced. I have also seen some in the media quoting that 2006 – 2012 is a SIX YEAR PERIOD… not only are they using old data… they can’t even correctly count the number of years in a stated range.
But even that… no one seems to notice or seems to care. On the larger scope of things… this is as close to a NON ISSUE as you can get.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/johnson-and-johnson-is-responsible-for-fueling-oklahomas-opioid-crisis-judge-rules-in-landmark-case/2019/08/26/ed7bc6dc-c7fe-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html
NORMAN, Okla. — A judge Monday found Johnson & Johnson responsible for fueling Oklahoma’s opioid crisis, ordering the health-care company to pay $572 million to remedy the devastation wrought by the epidemic on the state and its residents.
Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman’s landmark decision is the first to hold a drugmaker culpable for the fallout of years of liberal opioid dispensing that began in the late 1990s, sparking a nationwide epidemic of overdose deaths and addiction. More than 400,000 people have died of overdoses from painkillers, heroin and illegal fentanyl since 1999.
“The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma and must be abated immediately,” Balkman said, reading part of his decision aloud from the bench Monday afternoon.
“As a matter of law, I find that defendants’ actions caused harm, and those harms are the kinds recognized by [state law] because those actions annoyed, injured or endangered the comfort, repose, health or safety of Oklahomans,” he wrote in the decision.
[America’s largest drug companies distributed 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills]
With more than 40 states lined up to pursue similar claims against the pharmaceutical industry, the ruling in the first state case to go to trial could influence both sides’ strategies in the months and years to come. Plaintiffs’ attorneys around the country cheered the decision, saying they hoped it would be a model for an enormous federal lawsuit brought by nearly 2,000 cities, counties, Native American tribes and others scheduled to begin in Cleveland, Ohio, in October.
Balkman did not give the state everything it sought — state attorneys had asked for $17.5 billion over 30 years for treatment, emergency care, law enforcement, social services and other addiction-related needs. But the judge concluded it would cost $572 million to address the crisis in the first year based on the state’s plan. He said the state did not provide “sufficient evidence” of the time and money needed to respond after that.
At a news conference following the decision, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter described it as a “great triumph” two years in the making.
“Johnson & Johnson will finally be held accountable for thousands of deaths and addictions caused by their products,” he said. He challenged the company’s chief executive, Alex Gorsky, to “step up” and pay for treatment and other services for Oklahomans affected by substance abuse.
But just moments after the judge ruled, Johnson & Johnson, which has denied wrongdoing, said it would appeal. Company attorney Sabrina Strong said at a news conference, “We are disappointed and disagree with the judge’s decision. We believe it is flawed.
“We have sympathy for those who suffer from opioid use disorder,” Strong added. “But Johnson & Johnson did not cause the opioid abuse crisis here in Oklahoma or anywhere in this country.”
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law who followed the case, said in an email that other states will almost certainly adopt some of Oklahoma’s strategy — for instance, arguing for Johnson & Johnson’s culpability because it had two subsidiaries that produced, refined and supplied the ingredients for opioids to many other companies.
But with state laws differing, it is unclear whether other plaintiffs would be successful at proving the company harmed their residents, she said.
Alexandra Lahav, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, said it’s too early to predict the impact of Balkman’s decision on future cases.
“I think it’s important that people remember that this is just Oklahoma law, and it’s a lower court judge,” she said. “It hasn’t been vetted on appeal yet.”
Still, she said, the ruling may provide momentum to the idea that there is merit to these claims and encourage other states to pursue similar strategies.
As an outside observer, Lahav said, she is not convinced that Johnson & Johnson’s role as supplier of raw materials to other drug companies sufficiently connects it to the opioid crisis. But Balkman clearly accepted that, she said.
“I’m unconvinced that should be laid at Johnson & Johnson’s door,” she said.
Hunter (R) brought suit in 2017 against Johnson & Johnson and two other major drug companies, accusing them of creating “a public nuisance” by showering the state with opioids while downplaying the drugs’ addictive potential and persuading physicians to prescribe them even for minor aches and pains. Before the late 1990s, physicians reserved the powerful drugs primarily for cancer and post-surgical pain, as well as end-of-life care.
More than 6,000 Oklahomans have died of painkiller overdoses since 2000, the state charged in court papers, as the number of opioid prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies reached 479 every hour in 2017.
Johnson & Johnson’s products — a prescription opioid pill and a fentanyl skin patch sold by its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals — were a small part of the painkillers consumed in Oklahoma. But Hunter painted the company as an industry “kingpin” because two other companies it owned had grown, processed and supplied 60 percent of the ingredients in painkillers sold by most drug companies.
“At the root of this crisis was Johnson & Johnson, a company that literally created the poppy that became the source of the opioid crisis,” the state charged.
The state also said the health-care giant actively took part in the industry’s effort to change doctors’ reluctance to prescribe opioids by mounting an aggressive misinformation campaign that targeted the least knowledgeable physicians.
The company’s “marketing scheme was driven by a desire to make billions for their pain franchise,” Hunter wrote. “To do this, they developed and carried out a plan to directly influence and convince doctors to prescribe more and more opioids, despite the fact that defendants knew increasing the supply of opioids would lead to abuse, addiction, misuse, death and crime.”
[Opioid death rates soared in the communities that were flooded with pain pills]
Oklahoma settled in March with Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin, accepting $270 million from the company and its owners, the Sackler family, who were not named as defendants in the lawsuit. Most of that will go to a treatment and research center at Oklahoma State University, although the federal government is seeking a portion of the money. In May, two days before the trial began, the state settled with Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli-based manufacturer of generic drugs, for $85 million.
The core of Johnson & Johnson’s defense during the seven-week trial was that it could not be held liable for supplying legal products and ingredients, which were highly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and state authorities themselves.
Company lawyers sought to rebut accusations of a misinformation campaign by attributing actions to third parties and contending that sales calls to doctors did not lead to overprescribing or the drug crisis.
“Never once, however, did the state identify a single Oklahoma doctor who was misled by a single statement Janssen made,” the lawyers said in documents filed at the trial.
As for its two subsidiaries that supplied the painkillers’ ingredients, Johnson & Johnson lawyers said that Noramco and Tasmanian Alkaloids engaged in legal commerce under the watchful eye of the DEA and in compliance with the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Legally, the trial centered on the state’s perhaps unprecedented claim the drug company created a public nuisance in the state of Oklahoma. Historically, that law has been used against loud neighbors, brothels and polluters who used their properties in ways that harmed others.
In this case, Oklahoma said the drug company’s conduct clearly endangered the health of state residents.
An Oklahoma law professor called that a novel interpretation but said it could pass legal muster. But in May, a North Dakota judge threw out a similar state lawsuit against Purdue.
The drug company’s lawyers contend the state’s argument rested on “radical theories unmoored from more than a century of Oklahoma case law.” They noted that “no Oklahoma court has ever awarded a plaintiff a cash recovery” to stop a public nuisance.
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Insulin problems and express scripts. https://t.co/MN6Zfmmn9v
— Kendall Lubay (@Infernus136) August 19, 2019
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So I recently found out I’m at I’m in liver failure I went to see The Specialist and basically I was told because I’m on opioid they will do absolutely nothing to help me giving me less than a year to live it’s insane I don’t drink I do everything I can to take care of myself this was caused by no fault of me and basically I’m being given a death sentence how is that okayFiled under: General Problems | 7 Comments »
