Editorial: Opioid lawsuits offer a quick high, quick letdown
https://www.abqjournal.com/1063312/opioid-lawsuits-offer-a-quick-high-quick-letdown.html
In this litigious world, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas’ decision to join other states in suing Big Pharma over the nationwide opioid crisis makes a good headline. Ditto for the lawsuit from Mora County that preceded it and the one expected to follow from Bernalillo County. In fact, at last count the Washington Post had 25 states, cities and counties suing manufacturers, distributors and drugstore chains in connection with opioids, with more being filed almost weekly.
But it’s hard to determine how New Mexico residents would benefit from a far-from-guaranteed win.
While Balderas says the suit was filed to hold drug manufacturers and distributors “accountable” and to increase funding for opioid addiction treatment and law enforcement, it’s questionable that any money derived from it would actually be used for the stated purposes.
Remember when New Mexico won millions from Big Tobacco in a 1998 settlement agreement? The windfall, to an embarrassing extent, has ended up being a slush fund for legislative priorities that have nothing to do smoking’s impact. Tobacco settlement money has been used to balance the general budget, prop up the state lottery’s scholarship fund, cover costs for early childhood education – and the list goes on. Sure, some of that money from the “permanent” tobacco settlement fund pays for anti-smoking programs, but you get the picture.
Balderas contends opioid manufacturers “pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids” on the public and failed to tell doctors how addictive they were. The suit also says drug distributors “violated their duties by selling huge quantities of opioids that were diverted from their lawful medical purpose,” thus causing an opioid/heroin/overdose epidemic.
Does anyone believe someone with a medical degree doesn’t understand opioids are addictive? Then again, suing individual doctor feel-goods who hand painkillers out like Pez is nowhere as promisingly lucrative as suing Big Pharma’s deep pockets. As for diverted opioids, how are distributors responsible for things they sell being stolen from people they sell them to?
And where is personal responsibility in all of this?
The suits also fail to mention that opioids have been around for decades, are highly effective painkillers many patients do use as prescribed, and New Mexico had a chronic heroin problem long before the current opioid crisis – largely because of proximity to Mexico and illegal drug trade routes.
Attributing the opioid crisis to manufacturers and distributors ignores the real problem – demand.
There is no denying that the widespread availability, and popularity, of opioids has exacerbated this state’s opioid addiction and overdose rates, and that more must be done to address the scourge. Reforms – including New Mexico’s Prescription Monitoring Program, which requires health care providers check a patient’s prescription history in the PMP database to block doctor shopping for drugs – are working. The state Health Department announced a 63 percent increase in providers using the PMP since last year and a 5 percent decline in opioid prescriptions.
Sure there’s a lure to joining major suits like this one: For a somewhat modest investment, the state or counties might eventually realize a windfall (nowhere equal to what plaintiffs attorneys will make by comparison). New Mexico gets millions annually from Big Tobacco.
In July, Balderas joined a lawsuit against six generic drugmakers, alleging they conspired to hike prices for a common antibiotic and a diabetes medication. More recently, he’s signed onto a suit seeking to block President Donald Trump’s attempt to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program. While the former targets collusion and price gouging, and the latter is an immediate problem for about 7,300 DACA recipients here, this latest suit has a lot in common with the state’s opioid problem:
It delivers a quick high and a just-as-quick letdown.
Filed under: General Problems
So dumb. Going after big Pharma. Opiods are only popular because THAT’S THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS FOR REALLY BAD PAIN. BIG PHARMA isn’t RESPONSIBLE FOR heroin addiction they don’t even market it as it is illegal. The problem isn’t pain pills the problem is either the under treatment of pain or a person’s lack of self control. We all need to be accountable for our own actions and outcomes of those actions. The problem is easy to fix. Make everyone that getting prescribed medications of any kind sign a release of liability for potential physical dependence, the potential for abuse, and the possibility of death being an outcome for not taking them as directed. It also should be acknowledge that should death happen as a result of not heeding the warning labels slapped all over a an rx means the same as saying you made a choice to abuse or mix your medication and by doing so you died that you willingly and knowingly chose to die and nobody should be liable for the decisions made by those actions. It’s time anyway to thin out the herd because those people ruined it for those of us responsibly taking them.
In ever other country,,thee ,”informed consent ,”clause is honored,,,,not here,,,just like the torture definition..Honored in every other country,,,but the U.S.A,,,,,sickening,,,how corrupted,,”our” government has become,on our dime none the less,,,I think big pharma should start asking chronic pain patient to testify ,”for,” the use of their medicine,,i would testify in a heartbeat for mallincroft,,,, ,maryw
These suits or so ridiculous. I think the manufacturers ought to sue the states, counties, cities for not controlling their citizens who take opioids illegally. They are ruining the drug maker’s reputations.
I’m putting together a suit against 4 of the people responsible for writing the prescribing guidelines hopefully when I’m done they’ll be in prison and in the poor house.
can we all join in????maryw
Mary I have been in a real bad way I have a left anterior second 2nd rib fracture which if why I’ve been going to the doctor and er. I now have to set aside what I’m doing about the cdc and solely concentrate on what happened August 28th. E-mail me if ii8i8i88 still have it.