Mar 29, 2019 Updated 11 hrs ago

Prince William County is the latest local governments to file a lawsuit against companies making money off opioids. The county filed a lawsuit March 27 against 15 opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy businesses.

The move followed a $270 million settlement reached Tuesday in a case brought by the state of Oklahoma against Purdue Pharma over its marketing of OxyContin.

Purdue Pharma also is a defendant in the Prince William County case filed in state court. Other defendants include Abbott Laboratories, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon, Barr Laboratories, Actavis Pharma, Watson Laboratories, Allergan PLC and Insys Therapeutics, as well as distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. and pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts, Caremark/CVS Health, United Health Group and OptumRx.

The lawsuit alleges that each defendant has contributed to the opioid crisis in Virginia, and specifically in Prince William County, resulting in significant adverse impacts to the delivery of emergency medical services, law enforcement services, mental health services and substance abuse services throughout the county, according to a news release ...

http://www.insidenova.com/news/politics/prince_william/prince-william-county-files-lawsuit-against-opioid-manufacturers-distributors/article_49aed2d4-5255-11e9-9381-1fd7600f62af.html

March 29, 2019 03:12 PM 12 HOURS AGO
JONATHAN LAMANTIA

Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday that she was expanding New York's opioid-focused lawsuit to pursue drug distributors, the Sackler family and additional manufacturers, not just Purdue Pharma.

Former Attorney General Barbara Underwood first filed a lawsuit in August against Purdue in state Supreme Court in Suffolk County. James' expanded lawsuit also is filed in Suffolk County. The amended complaint's allegations against the drugmakers and distributors include false and deceptive marking of painkillers and failure to monitor the diversion of drugs in violation of the state Controlled Substance Act.

"This lawsuit breaks new ground by setting forth an exhaustive set of facts and examples alleging distributor misconduct," James said during a news conference Thursday. "The opioid epidemic is especially destructive to New York because of the fraud, the willful misconduct and the gross negligence of distributors."

The new defendants in the case include manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA and Allergan; and distributors Cardinal Health, McKesson Corp., Amerisource Bergen Drug Corp. and Rochester Drug Cooperative ...

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-care/attorney-general-pursues-distributors-sacklers-expanded-opioid-suit

Jule Hubbard 14 hrs ago

lawsuit filed a little over a year ago on behalf of Wilkes County government to seek compensation for costs resulting from opioid addiction has been amended to include eight companies engaged in selling prescription opioid pain medicine.

Added as defendants were Walmart Inc., Rite Aid Corp., CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., KVK-Tech Inc., Par Pharmaceutical, SpecGx LLC and the North Carolina Mutual Wholesale Drug Co.

These companies were added because a federal data collection system indicated they were distributors of prescription opioid pain medication in Wilkes County, said Attorney Garry Whitaker of Winston-Salem ...

https://www.journalpatriot.com/news/retailers-added-to-opioid-suit/article_2248b7ec-5222-11e9-b8d5-1bb90f4ffdba.html

BMJ 2019; 364 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l1507 (Published 29 March 2019)
Owen Dyer

Members of the branch of the Sackler family that owns and controls Purdue Pharma, whose product OxyContin became synonymous with the opioid crisis, have been named as defendants in two major lawsuits in the US, as plaintiffs increasingly fear that the company will seek bankruptcy to avoid paying damages.

Purdue Pharma has been the subject of public opprobrium and litigation since 2007, when the company and three executives pleaded guilty to criminal misbranding charges over OxyContin’s marketing and paid $634m in fines.

On 24 March more than 600 US cities, counties, and Native American tribes from 28 states jointly filed a federal lawsuit that named eight members of the Sackler family, well known benefactors in the art world in several countries, as defendants.

“Eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the opioid epidemic,” the complaint alleged ...

https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1507

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 29 2019 • 4:01 AM EDT
Chloe Taylor

... Last week, the trust rescinded an offer of a $1.3 million grant to the U.K.’s National Portrait Gallery to “avoid being a distraction” to the museum. Days later, art gallery group Tate announced it would no longer accept gifts from the Sacklers.

The Sacklers also saw their money expelled from hedge fund Hildene Capital Management this month, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement to the Journal, hedge fund manager Brett Jefferson said: “the weight on my conscience led me to terminate the relationship.”

Campaigners are also calling on institutions to strip the family’s name from their buildings. Earlier this year, photographer Nan Goldin’s campaign group Sackler PAIN led a protest against Sackler funding at New York’s Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim — which received $9 million in gifts from the Sacklers between 1995 and 2015 — confirmed to CNBC on Friday last week it would no longer accept Sackler donations. Elsewhere, Daniel Weiss, president and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, told CNBC via email that the Met was conducting a review of its gift acceptance policies and had not received a gift from the Sacklers for two years ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/sackler-family-halts-donations-as-opioid-lawsuits-mount.html

March 30, 2019 12:01 am

... Dr. Joshua Lee is from the New York University School of Medicine. Prescription opioids were responsible for 25 percent of all overdose deaths in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lee said.

“While pain and suffering are a universal human experience, the United States remains a global outlier in terms of the amounts and rates of prescription use, a market that steadily expanded beginning in the 1990s,” Lee said. “No other developed country or economy comes close in terms of the amounts of prescription opioids sitting in America’s medicine cabinets, and no other country has seen as much harm and preventable death as a result.”

The lawsuit package is a key step to blocking the ludicrously simple access to prescription painkillers. It should also serve notice to pharmaceutical companies doing business in the state that law enforcement is coming after them as well as the small-fry drug dealers reeled in by local police.

James’ lawsuits are based on claims the companies failed to properly monitor and report suspicious orders of the narcotics and continued to fill the orders. Earning immense profit and looking the other way as people die from overdoses is intolerable and disgraceful. Big Pharma’s reckoning is approaching and it will be from sins of omission.

https://www.hudsonvalley360.com/article/big-pharma-faces-day-reckoning?wallit_nosession=1

and my wish for the Sackler Family is that their lives be filled with lawyers for many years to come.