Washington, Greene counties should join new pharma lawsuit
A provocative column by The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof that appears on this page today argues that the biggest drug pushers out there aren’t the small-fry dealers who peddle their wares on street corners or out of their cars, but instead are the denizens of executive suites at mammoth drug companies.
In Kristof’s telling, they have inflicted much greater harm on the American public than all the petty criminals who sell illegal drugs because they sparked the opioid epidemic that has sickened and decimated communities across the country, with Western Pennsylvania being one of the hardest-hit regions.
And how can drug companies be brought to heel? After all, they seem to all but print cash, and they have powerful allies in statehouses and on Capitol Hill. What can individuals or municipalities really do?
For an answer, we could look to Beaver County.
Last week, it became the first county in this region to sue an assortment of manufacturers and sellers of prescription narcotics, arguing that they have engaged in, among other things, fraud, negligence, misrepresentation and deceptive acts. The defendants include the companies Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma.
Like other municipalities that have sued, Beaver County is asserting that it has spent millions of dollars confronting the opioid epidemic, whether through emergency calls, treatment and incarceration. And just like the lawsuits that were filed against tobacco companies two decades ago, the plaintiffs are asking the drug companies to foot the bill for these burdensome costs.
The attorney who has filed the suit, Robert Peirce Jr., has said he would like to get Washington and Greene counties on board, along with Lawrence and Fayette counties. They should, and there’s some indication that they will. Greene County Commission Chairman Blair Zimmerman told the Observer-Reporter last week, “Everyone agreed that we were open to what they were saying. I think it’s becoming a statewide and even national issue to go (after) these pharmaceutical companies for pushing these opioids onto the market. Doctors were getting kickbacks if they pushed, pushed, pushed.”
Two other Pennsylvania counties, Delaware and Lackawanna, have gone after pharmaceutical companies, as has Ohio. Along with recovering costs associated with the opioid crisis, we hope the eventual resolution of these lawsuits is something like the tobacco settlement – along with costs being recovered, limits should be placed on how powerful painkillers are marketed and sold.
Despite strenuous efforts by law enforcement, addiction counselors, family members and friends, the opioid epidemic promises to take as many lives this year as it did last year. Across the country, 64,000 people were claimed in 2016, more than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War. Some forecasters believe that 650,000 Americans could lose their lives to opioids over the next 10 years unless some kind of brake is applied to the epidemic. The lawsuits being filed against pharmaceutical companies don’t represent the total solution to this problem, but they are a step in the right direction.