Ohio takes legal action against pharma companies for opioid crisis
pharmafile | June 1, 2017 | News story | Medical Communications | Ohio, opioid, opioid crisis
If there is one state that needs answers for its citizens’ struggles with opioids, it is Ohio. The state saw a 21.5% increase in deaths from overdoses from just 2014 to 2015. The total deaths from overdoses were 3,310, which gives Ohio the dubious honour of being in the top five states for overdose deaths.
Ohio has now decided to take action against the pharmaceutical companies who market their opioid painkillers and it claims is at fault for the crisis. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit against five opioid manufacturers alleging that the companies engaged in fraudulent marketing activities regarding the benefits and risks of their products.
The five companies are Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Allergan and Endo Health Solutions. The companies stand accused of violating Ohio’s Consumer Sales Practices Act and are being sued for damages to the state.
Ohio joins a growing list of states and local governments that are pursuing legal action against pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid crisis that is currently gripping North America. Ohio joins the states of California and West Virginia in suing the pharma companies, whilst counties in New York and the city of Chicago have also filed their own cases.
It is a worrying trend for the pharmaceutical industry, as negative publicity from the opioid crisis mounts as the industry struggles to repair its reputation after a series of price hiking cases hit the front pages – with the behaviour of Mylan and Marathon being brought into question.
The problem is such that the new FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, has used his platform to speak out about both pricing and the opioid crisis as two key issues for the agency; only last week he said that the opioid crisis was his first priority in office.
Regardless of Gottlieb’s words, Ohio has pushed to change the situation in its state through its own means rather than relying on the FDA for support. In a statement, Mike DeWine explained the reasons behind the legal case: “We believe the evidence will…show that these companies got thousands and thousands of Ohioans – our friends, our family members, our co-workers, our kids – addicted to opioid pain medications, which has all too often led to use of the cheaper alternatives of heroin and synthetic opioids. 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 taking even more opioids”.
DeWine also explained that 2.3 million Ohio residents were prescribed opioid pain killers in 2015, which works out at close to a fifth of the entire population of the state.
What the outcome of the trial shall be will unfold in time but what is clear, with this case joining other similar ones, is that the issue is not going away and that more awkward questions are being asked of the pharma companies involved.
Ben Hargreaves
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