{"id":23087,"date":"2022-08-18T05:40:01","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T09:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=23087"},"modified":"2022-08-18T05:40:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T09:40:01","slug":"us-pharmacy-chains-ordered-to-pay-650m-in-ohio-opioids-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/08\/18\/us-pharmacy-chains-ordered-to-pay-650m-in-ohio-opioids-suit\/","title":{"rendered":"US pharmacy chains ordered to pay $650m in Ohio opioids suit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A federal judge has ruled that America’s three largest pharmacy chains must pay $650.5m (\u00a3539.8m) for helping fuel a painkiller crisis in two Ohio counties.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In November, a federal court found Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS and Walmart helped create an oversupply of addictive opioid pills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The money will be used to help combat the impact of the crisis in Lake and Trumbull counties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The companies plan to appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Millions of people in the US have become addicted to opiate-based painkillers such as fentanyl and OxyContin over the last 20 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nearly half a million deaths were attributed to painkiller overdoses between 1999 and 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In court, attorneys for Lake and Trumbull counties – both near Cleveland – put the total financial cost of the crisis at $3.3 billion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Both counties, like other other jurisdictions across the US, have argued that the crisis has put an enormous strain on local resources, social programmes and legal systems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A failure to ensure that prescriptions were valid, their attorneys have argued, created a public nuisance as vast quantities of pills flooded their communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Between 2012 and 2016, more than 80 million painkillers were reportedly distributed in Trumbull County – about 400 pills per resident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In Lake County, the figure stood at 61 million pills over the same time frame.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A US district judge ruled that Lake County will receive $306m over 15 years, while Trumbull County will receive $344m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the short-term, the three companies have been ordered to pay about $87m to cover the first two years of the plan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The ruling was quickly praised by officials from both counties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lake County Commissioner John Hamercheck, for example, said that the ruling “marks the start of a new day in our fight to end the opioid crisis”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The three companies have repeatedly denied the allegations and claimed they attempted to prevent painkillers from being diverted towards illicit use. Additionally, they argued that it was doctors – rather than pharmacies – that ultimately determined how many pills were prescribed and to whom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When contacted by the BBC, all three companies said they will appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We never manufactured or marketed opioids nor did we distribute them to the ‘pill mills’ and internet pharmacies that fuelled this crisis,” Walgreens said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“The plaintiffs’ attempt to resolve the opioid crisis with an unprecedented expansion of public nuisance law is misguided and unsustainable,” the statement added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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More than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against opioid manufacturers and pharmacies in the hopes of recouping the costs spent combating the crisis.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has ruled that America’s three largest pharmacy chains must pay $650.5m (\u00a3539.8m) for helping fuel a painkiller crisis in two Ohio counties. In November, a federal court found Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[8718,8634,115,6185,6186,8716,8717,5398],"class_list":{"0":"post-23087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-cvs","11":"tag-lake-county","12":"tag-ohio","13":"tag-opioids","14":"tag-pharmaceuticals","15":"tag-trumbull-county","16":"tag-walgreens-boots-alliance","17":"tag-walmart","18":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23089,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23087\/revisions\/23089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}