US lawsuit filed against companies accused of opioid overdose | Court Matters
A West Virginia lawsuit accuses drug dealers of causing opioid epidemics and overdosing on painkillers.
Drug companies accused of drug trafficking in the United States are facing millions of dollars in lawsuits filed Monday in West Virginia, most affected by drug epidemic.
The city of Huntington has filed a lawsuit against three drug companies – AmerisourceBergen Drug Co, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp – for allegedly smuggling drugs into the state.
“It is necessary for the case to continue in West Virginia, where the opioid epidemic has taken place,” judges Paul Farrell and Anne McGinness Kearse said in a statement.
More than 400,000 people have died in U.S. overdoses since the early 2000s, while pharmaceutical manufacturers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone boosted sales through a few stores and doctors.
West Virginia has the world’s highest risk of opioid overdose.
A U.S. judge last month rejected a company attempt to dismiss the West Virginia case.
Hundreds of similar cases have been filed throughout the country, but Huntington’s case has been a national goal for medical companies to pay for development and medical care.
“Between 2006 and 2014, manufacturers and distributors of opioids supplied the West Virginia government with 1.1 billion hydrocodone tablets and 1.xycodone oxycodone,” the lawsuit said.
“The bulk of the cargo ship is 611 painkillers for every father, mother and child in the state.”
Drug manufacturers and distributors, including manufacturer Oxycontin Purdue Pharma and the top US CVS for CVS, are also mentioned in the case.
Drug manufacturers and pharmacists say the epidemic is the doctors who sold the drugs, creating a 15-year black market that has been under control since 2015.
But the government has criticized and jailed or fined doctors, pharmacies and drug manufacturers for everything from trafficking to opioid intolerance.
US Department of Justice challenged Walmart Inc. in December, he accused the trafficker of causing an opioid problem and ignoring signs from drug manufacturers.
U.S. protesters arrived at $ 8.3bn installation and Purdue Pharma in October, when the company admitted violence in the distribution of its victims and agreed to forfeit their property in exchange for bankruptcy.
Great technology in the US McKinsey & Co agreed to pay $ 573m to settle a lawsuit filed by U.S. states, which accused the company of helping to tackle the opioid problem by providing advertising and marketing services to Purdue Pharma and drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.
As legal opioid regimens were enforced, more people who started taking drugs turned to heroin and fentanyl illegally, exacerbating the epidemic.
About 90,000 deaths from drug overdose were reported last year nationwide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of which about three quarters were opioids.
