Adjudicate swiftly lawsuit against makers of opiates

The editorial cartoon published on this page Thursday aptly depicted the Grim Reaper feeling perfectly at home in Ohio. And why shouldn’t he? Ohio ignominiously ranks as the death capital of the nation in the ongoing opioid plague.

The latest major and promising initiative to help erase that claim to shame came Wednesday when Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a 103-page civil lawsuit against five drug companies the state claims have served as merchants of death in fueling the epidemic to exorbitantly high levels.

Coincidentally, the lawsuit was filed the same week when tentative data on Ohio overdose deaths for 2016 were reported by the Columbus Dispatch. According to that newspaper’s survey of all 88 county coroners, at least 4,149 Ohioans died of opioid-related deaths, a 36 percent increase from 2015. At least 227 of those deaths were recorded in the Mahoning Valley.

Many of them are among addicts who began their descent through perfectly legal opiate prescriptions for pain. In fact, DeWine, an expected 2018 GOP candidate for governor, notes in the lawsuit that 80 percent of heroin users report first using prescription opioids.

Indeed today, few respected medical authorities or institutions deny that common opiate pills prescribed to many of Ohio’s 1.16 million sufferers of chronic pain can serve as gateway drugs to more potent and deadly opiates such as heroin, fentanyl and carfentanyl, the latter of which is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine.

In this week’s lawsuit, the state names five pharmaceutical manufacturers as defendants and seeks unspecified monetary damages from each of them: Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Johnson and Johnson and Allergan, formerly known as Actavis.

Boosting profits

The state charges those companies “falsely and misleadingly” downplayed the serious likelihood of addiction. It documents in great detail campaigns aimed at physicians and the public to boost their sales and profits.

Such marketing pitches stand in direct contrast to stark warnings issued by the surgeon general of the United States last summer. In a letter to the nation’s physicians, then Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy expressly connected this “urgent health crisis” to “heavy marketing of opioids to doctors ... many of whom were even taught – incorrectly – that opioids are not addictive when prescribed for pain.”

As a result of such “schemes,” the suit claims the drugmakers violated multiple state laws, including the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act, and committed Medicaid fraud. As relief, the suit seeks declarations that the companies’ actions were illegal, an end to continued “deceptions,” damages to the state for costs incurred in dealing with the epidemic and refunds to consumers who paid for unnecessary prescriptions.

Thus far, the targeted drugmakers have denied the charges or have declined to comment on the lawsuit.

From our perspective, the lawsuit stands as a fitting complement to other initiatives of the administration of Gov. John Kasich to tame the opiate monster in our midst. Early in his tenure, the governor ordered a major crackdown on illicit “pill mills” where opiates were illegally manufactured and distributed in mass quantities.

Then earlier this year, the state slapped rigid maximum dosage limits for opiates that physicians are allowed to prescribe.

Targeting legal drugmakers loomed as the next logical step. Before the suit was filed, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman urged such action: “We aggressively pursue those who traffic heroin and other illegal narcotics and must be similarly strong towards those who foster addiction in pursuit of profit,” the Democrat candidate for governor in 2018, wrote in a letter to the attorney general.

In a broad perspective, as DeWine points out, the civil action is simply about justice and fairness. “It is just and it is right that the people who played a significant role in creating this mess in the state of Ohio should pay to clean it up,” he said.

It is our hope the lawsuit, which will be adjudicated in a jury trial in Ross County, will wend its way swiftly through the judicial system. With Ohio’s opiate death toll skyrocketing out of control, no time can be wasted toward closing one of the major conduits into addiction and, too often, into the grips of the Grim Reaper.