If the suit succeeds, the money must help victims, reimburse taxpayers
According to elected leaders across the land, legally prescribed opioids, which are powerful pain relievers, are causing a disaster in the United States because they are being overproduced, overprescribed and widely abused. It’s an epidemic that is creating nightmare scenarios in states, counties and cities all over the country.
Legal opioids are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. The cost to society through the criminal justice system, in health care expenses and in lost productivity has been estimated at more than $500 billion. The epidemic is breaking up families and disrupting the economies of many states as once-productive employees disappear into addiction's grasp. There aren't nearly enough treatment programs to handle the crush of people trying to get off the drugs.
Now, local and state leaders are fighting back against this legal outrage.
Rockford and Winnebago County are the latest governments to join forces to fight this evil, and we applaud them for having the courage to do it.
The two local governments announced this week that they intend to file a federal lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and distributors that produce and market opioids. Defendants are likely to include McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen.
Rockford and Winnebago County have hired lawyer and former federal trial judge Ann Callis of Edwardsville and Peter Mougey, recognized as one of Florida’s top 100 trial lawyers, to take on the case. They will work as special assistants to State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato. Taxpayers will not foot the bill, city and county leaders assure us.
Lest anyone think the city and county are taking on Big Pharma by themselves, think again. Boone County intends to file a similar suit. The counties of DuPage, Kane, Will and Lake already have filed suits against drugmakers including Abbott Laboratories of Lake Bluff, as well as three doctors. Other such lawsuits are being filed by communities from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam.
If you aren’t familiar with the vastness of the problem we’re talking about, here are some numbers for you to ponder:
From 1999 to 2015, more than 183,000 died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescribed opioids.
In Illinois, 11,000 people have died since 2008 from opioid overdoses.
In Winnebago County, fatal drug overdoses shot up from 33 in 2006 to 96 in 2016. There were 122 fatal overdoses in 2017 through Dec. 15, according to the Winnebago County Coroner’s Office.
Worse than that, the abuse of prescription opioids is leading directly to the abuse of the illegal opioid called heroin.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of heroin users jumped from 404,000 in 2002 to 948,000 in 2016, a 135 percent increase..
The number of opioid prescriptions written in the U.S. each year is roughly equal to that of the U.S. population of 320 milion. The National Institutes of Health also estimates that 64,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in 2016, with 20,000 of those attributed to synthetic opioids.
In Illinois, more people died in 2014 from drug overdoses than homicides or motor vehicle accidents.
Cities, counties and states contend that taxpayers are having to pay for addictions and deaths caused by overprescription of opioids.
As Bruscato puts it: "Drug manufacturers have strategically, and with questionable intent, marketed and promoted their products. Drug manufacturers bear responsibility for what many are calling an epidemic; therefore they should bear responsibility to solve the tragedies this scourge has caused."
We agree. And should the suit be successful, we will be watching like hawks to make sure that cash payments to the city and county are used for their intended purposes: to reimburse the city and county for services rendered and to beef up treatment services for the walking wounded who want to put their lives back together. There should be treatment for all who want it, not just for those who can afford it. The drug companies got them hooked. They can pay to unhook them.