Okla. AG Files Lawsuit Against 3 Opioid Distributors

Okla. AG Files Lawsuit Against 3 Opioid Distributors

Introduction

On Monday, Oklahoma Attorney General announced a new lawsuit filed against three distributors of opioids. The three pharmaceutical distributors include McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.

The attorney general in the lawsuit filed in Cleveland County District Court stated that the three defendants fueled the opioid crisis by distributing large and unreasonable quantities of opioids to communities throughout the United States, including Oklahoma. According to the AG's office, in 2017, there were 479 prescriptions for opioids per hour, which is enough for each adult in the state to have 156 pills.

The lawsuit also alleged negligence and wrongful enrichment, seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit followed after the AG's office seized more than $363 million in settlements with other companies over the opioid crisis. Last week, on Friday, Endo Pharmaceuticals reached an out of court settlement with the state and agreed to pay $8.75 million. Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals also made a settlement of $270 million and $85 million, respectively, last year.

Earlier, New York's attorney general Letitia James announced a deal stating more companies will be able to make an easy-to-use version of opioid overdose antidote.

The agreement by the attorney general’s office states that Adapt Pharma, which was acquired by Rockville, Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions in 2018, had the sole rights to sell the drug nalmefene using Aptar Pharma's nasal spray technology. Following the agreement, Emergent will no longer hold a contract that allowed it to be the only company to develop a nasal spray using nalmefene, which is still in the making and not in the market.

The agreement will not affect already in use Narcan, a spray version of the drug naloxone now sold by Emergent, as the agreement is not subject to spray technology. Narcan is popular among police, firefighters, and others who use it on people affected by overdose.

The easy-to-use version antidote would still require Food and Drug Administration approval before the product goes into the market.
Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.

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