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Top pharma chains held responsible for opioid crisis
23 Nov, 2021 23:05
Three major pharmacy chains are being charged for their alleged role in Ohio’s opioid crisis, a federal jury has declared, setting the stage for further verdicts as more states seek to prosecute drugmakers and distributors.
CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens have been found guilty of “recklessly” distributing massive amounts of pain pills across a pair of Ohio counties, a federal jury declared on Tuesday in a first-of-its-kind verdict. The ruling represents the first time pharmacy companies had been held legally responsible for the crisis that has wreaked havoc across the US over the last two decades, killing over half a million Americans.
The verdict opens the door to further charges, as states and municipalities elsewhere in the US seek to hold someone – drugmakers, sellers, distributors – responsible for the massive suffering the opioid epidemic has inflicted on their populations. Around 80 million prescription painkillers were doled out between 2012 and 2016 in Trumbull County alone, the equivalent of 400 pills for every resident; Lake County experienced a similar influx, with 61 million pills flowing into the small community.
Lake and Trumbull counties blamed the three pharmacy mega-chains for failing to halt the flow of pills into the hands of addicts and dealers, leading to hundreds of overdose deaths and costing the two counties around $1 billion, according to the counties’ attorney. The amount of damages to be paid will be decided by a federal judge in the spring.
Previous legal efforts have focused on the manufacturers and distributors, but the lawyer in the Ohio suit was able to convince the jury that the pharmacies played an “outsize role” in creating a public hazard in the manner in which they dispensed the pills. Attorney Mark Lanier pointed out that “the law requires pharmacies to be diligent in dealing drugs,” arguing the case should “be a wake-up call that failure will not be accepted.”
CVS and Walgreens have announced that they will appeal the verdicts, and lawyers for all three chains claimed they had policies in place to halt the influx of pills whenever their pharmacists were “concerned” about “suspicious” orders from doctors, though they ultimately argued it was up to doctors to decide how many pills could legitimately be prescribed for one condition or another. Two other pharmaceutical chains, Rite Aid and Giant Eagle, already settled with the counties.
While a Walgreens lawyer insisted at the start of the trial that pharmaceutical manufacturers had “tricked” doctors into “writing way too many pills,” he claimed the trend toward writing prescriptions for what used to be end-of-life drugs like opioid painkillers had come up organically due to the recognition of medical groups that “patients have the right to be treated for pain.”
Lake Co., Ohio
New opioids spark deadly wave of overdoses in DC
30 Nov, 2021 13:52
The use of synthetic opioids which are stronger than fentanyl has soared in Washington, DC, sparking a wave of tragic drug overdoses that appears to be growing, federal and local forensic analysts have discovered.
Examining used syringes throughout the US capital, analysts found that the use of two drugs, known as protonitazene and isotonitazene, has increased in Washington, DC. They fear that combined with the existing presence of fentanyl, opioids are fueling an increase in fatal overdoses during the past 12 months.
While it is not known how widespread the use of the two new opioids is, their addition to the ongoing drug crisis in American cities reflects the growing wave of overdoses that is not showing any signs of slowing down.
Warning of the threat posed by the influx of new opioids, Alexandra Evans, a DC analyst at the city’s public health lab, flagged how there are concerns the drugs could be resistant to existing life-saving antidotes used to combat the effects of fentanyl.
“We’ve been able to detect some really unique trends to D.C., like things that other cities aren’t really seeing,” Morgan Levitas, from the DC Department of Forensic Sciences, said, raising the alarm about the drug situation in the city.
The Center for Forensic Science Research and Education confirmed the potency of the new opioids. Addressing the situation, the center’s Alex Krotulski stated that they are three or four times the strength of the highly prolific fentanyl, which has been blamed as the key driver behind America’s record number of drug overdose deaths.
“The majority of them that we see are more potent than fentanyl – sometimes way more potent than fentanyl – which is really scary,” Krotulski said.
Data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the scale of the opioid drug crisis, finding an estimated 498 overdoses in the past 12 months in Washington, DC alone. The DC drug death total is larger than the number of fatal overdoses in 13 states and significantly higher than the city’s homicide rate.
Big Pharma unites Americans in disdain
1 Dec, 2021 23:41
© REUTERS/Yves Herman/Illustration
Most Americans of all political persuasions distrust large pharmaceutical companies, think their priority is profit and not helping people, and believe they have too much influence on the government, according to a new poll.
Only 6% of American voters trust big pharmaceutical companies “a lot,” while 19% don’t trust them at all, and 53% distrust them to some degree, said a Rasmussen Reports poll published on Wednesday.
Of course, the 6% all work for big pharma!
Three out of four respondents think Big Pharma is motivated by profit. There was remarkably little divergence on this issue along party lines, with 78% of Republicans, 71% of Democrats and 75% of unaffiliated voters in agreement. Only 14% think the drug companies are concerned with making their customers’ lives better.
And 6% of them work for Big Pharma, so who are the other 8%?
Meanwhile, 70% of voters say the drug-makers have too much influence on government and public policy.
The national online and phone survey was conducted by Rasmussen earlier this week, on a sample of 1,000 likely voters with a 95% level of confidence and a 3 percentage point margin of sampling error.
The poll results come after the Biden administration updated recommendations for Covid-19 booster jabs and expanded vaccination, citing the new Omicron strain of the virus.
“Everyone ages 18 and older should get a booster shot either when they are six months after their initial Pfizer or Moderna series or two months after their initial J&J vaccine,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Monday.
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