Oklahoma’s chief prosecutor promised to press forward with a lawsuit against three prescription drugmakers on Tuesday after reaching a $270 million settlement with a fourth, Purdue Pharma, over claims that it misled doctors and patients about the risks of opioid painkillers.
Attorney General Mike Hunter sued the companies — including Allergan, Teva, and Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson — in state court in June 2017, alleging they helped fueled a nationwide opioid epidemic that has taken a particularly harsh toll in his state.
An average of 130 Americans die every day from overdoses of the drugs, which range from street products like heroin and illegally produced fentanyl to prescription painkillers such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and morphine, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A nationwide surge in the deaths, which has helped lower U.S. life expectancy, began as prescriptions for the painkillers rose in the 1990s, a trend followed by a rise in heroin overdoses in 2010 and an increase in overdoses with synthetics like illicitly manufactured fentanyl in 2013.
The numbers have prompted growing concern from lawmakers and health officials nationwide, prompting the Trump administration to set up a cross-agency effort to simultaneously reduce demand and limit availability.
The “opioid crisis is clearly one of the most harrowing public health challenges of our time,” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said in a March 19 update on the program. “You are now more likely to die of a drug overdose in this country than in a car accident.”
[Related: Kellyanne Conway stresses destigmatizing opioid addiction]
As a result, average life expectancy in the U.S. fell for the third straight year in 2018, “something not seen in this nation in 100 years,” she added. While federal agents have seized more than 16,000 kilograms of heroin since 2017 and recovered nearly 3.7 million pounds of unused prescription medications, state governments and others have targeted pharmaceutical companies with civil lawsuits such as Oklahoma’s.
Fatal drug overdoses in the state surged eightfold from 1999 to 2012, according to CDC data, and Oklahoma leads the country in prescription painkiller abuse by people 12 and older, the attorney general said. While the state isn’t ground zero in the epidemic, it’s “pretty close,” he added.
“Although we celebrate this momentous victory today, there is a long road ahead,” Hunter said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference at Oklahoma State University. The trial of the remaining defendants is still slated to start May 28, he said.
The settlement with Purdue, the maker of Oxycontin-branded oxycodone, was reached in part because of the company’s deliberations over whether to file bankruptcy, Hunter explained. It includes a $200 million endowment of the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences’ Center for Wellness & Recovery.
“Today’s agreement is only the first step in our ultimate goal of ending this nightmarish epidemic,” Hunter said. “We continue preparing for trial, where we intend to hold the other defendants in this case accountable for creating the worst public health crisis this state and nation have ever seen.”
Purdue Pharma didn’t return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. Allergan, the company behind painkillers Kadian and Norco, said in a regulatory filing it faces more than 1,300 legal actions involving opioids and can’t estimate the financial impact of the cases.
Both Dublin-based Allergan and Israel-based Teva cited a multi-state investigation into the marketing of opioids in the U.S., and Teva noted a Justice Department subpoena for records on the production, marketing, and sale of opioid medicines.
Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky described such claims against the New Brunswick, N.J.-based health products company as “baseless and unsubstantiated” at its 2018 annual shareholders meeting. “We have strong internal compliance programs and rigorous independent quality and safety review processes all designed to ensure compliant business practices and high-quality products,” he said.
[Read more: Melania Trump challenges media to cover opioid crisis as often as gossip]
