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IPFS News Link • States' Rights

Ohio Sets Major Precedent, Sues Big Pharma for Deliberately 'Fueling Opioid Epidemic'

• http://thefreethoughtproject.com

Five goliath pharmaceutical companies have been served with a lawsuit from the State of Ohio for their role in the opioid epidemic, because, as state Attorney General Mike DeWine alleges, they "helped unleash a health care crisis that has had far-reaching financial, social, and deadly consequences in the State of Ohio."

Ohio now joins a number of states in attempting to hold Big Pharma responsible for fueling the crisis of oft-ruinous addiction to legally prescribed opioid medications and their deemed illegal brethren, such as heroin.

Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and its subsidiary, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson and subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Allergan have all been named in the lawsuit.

"This lawsuit is about justice, it's about fairness, it's about what is right," DeWine opined in an announcement from southern Ohio's Ross County — an area crushed by the epidemic in fatalities from overdoses to legal painkillers and illegal heroin — as quoted by Southwestern Ohio NBC affiliate, WLWT. "These drug companies knew that what they were saying was wrong and they did it anyway and they continue to do so."

Figures for 2016, which have yet to be released, are expected to handily top the distressing 3,050 fatal overdoses Ohio experienced in 2015 — figures wholly unacceptable to DeWine, and cogent of the nation's struggle to rein in rampant over-prescribing and other facets of the opioid scourge.

NPR reports the lawsuit "accuses the companies of engaging in a sustained marketing campaign to downplay the addiction risks of the prescription opioid drugs they sell and to exaggerate the benefits of their use for health problems such as chronic pain."

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