Ohio Cities Face Opioid Epidemic Amidst Current Pandemic

Ohio Cities Face Opioid Epidemic Amidst Current Pandemic

Introduction

Reports claim that amidst the pandemic outbreak, two Ohio cities, Dayton and Columbus, are facing a sharp rise in opioid overdose (OD) death rates.

Ann Stevens with Montgomery County Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services informed that there has been a 58% increase in fatal overdose deaths compared to a year ago. Stevens said that the people are traumatized, nervous, and depressed by the quarantine and social isolation, which may be the reasons for the rise in deaths due to opioids.

Tom Synan, Hamilton County Addiction Response Coalition member, also showed concern over how isolation is affecting the people who are on the verge of recovery from the opioid epidemic as the affected people need a personal touch to deal with the epidemic.

Synan and Stevens both are efficiently trying to tackle the epidemic amidst the chaos of pandemic by talking to the opioid-induced people over the phone and by giving telehealth visits.

Synan even alerted that China plays a prominent role in importing the drugs, and there have been fewer imports during the pandemic outbreak. Currently, the opioids distributors are at the halt of business, but as soon as the pandemic ends, the distributors will aggressively market their products to cover the losses they suffered during the pandemic.

A trial date of March 2021 has been set by a panel of judges from West Virginia for hearing the lawsuits filed by counties, cities, towns, and hospitals claiming the damages caused due to the opioid epidemic by the opioid manufacturers and distributors.

Last week a status conference took place, which was headed by Judge Alan Moats, who heads the panel of the lawsuits. The conference was to discuss and calculate the amount of damage caused by the drug manufacturers, as West Virginia is the most affected state with a higher rate of overdose death rate in the nation.

The lawsuits filed by the counties and cities claim that a large number of people got affected due to the opioid crisis, which was caused because of the negligence of manufacturers and lack of awareness of the use of opioid painkillers whereas, the company responded that the drugs were distributed only to the licensed pharmacies.

McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen are the companies involved in the lawsuit, who have agreed to pay a combined settlement of $72 million to the states of West Virginia. Counties and cities have filed their separate lawsuits apart from the state.

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an 'opioid crisis'.