Ohio Files Lawsuit Against Rx Companies for Opioid Crisis
Ohio, like many parts of the U.S., is facing a serious opioid addiction and overdose epidemic, and its state attorney says pharmaceutical companies that flood the state with opioid painkillers are to blame. As a new medical cannabis system offers hope for harm reduction moving forward, a new lawsuit attempts to secure restorative justice for communities harmed by opioids.
Once wealthy and proud, Portsmouth, Ohio a major steel and footwear manufacturing center in the mid-20thCentury became a shipping hub for illegal opiates in the 21st.
As many as 3.8 billion doses of opiates were distributed in Ohio between 2011 and 2015 many of them through Portsmouth.
Sam Quinones, author of the book Dreamland: The True Tale of Americas Opiate Epidemic, told the Los Angeles Times that the town and its economy was so hooked on prescription painkillers that Oxycontin and Vicodin became currency literal currency, traded for food, clothes and baby formula.
People would rob drug dealers and not take their money they would take their pills, he said.
And pill mills the offices of unscrupulous doctors willing to prescribe addictive pharmaceuticals by the handful were like the central banks.
The pill mills are largely gone, shuttered by law enforcement, the doctors licenses to prescribe revoked thats made things worse: People dependent on opiates turned to heroin, which in turn has been adulterated with stupendously powerful, seriously deadly synthetic drugs like fentanyl and its stronger cousin carfentanil.
Cannabis has serious potential as a harm reduction tool for communities struggling with opioid addiction, and while Ohios medical cannabis system is still taking shape, it offers real promise for reducing the death toll associated with opioid abuse.
Meanwhile, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in the state. According to news media, 4,100 people died from drug overdoses in 2016 a 36 percent increase from 2015.
And the problem acknowledged by President Donald Trump as a major national crisis is getting worse.
Who is to blame? Where did it all begin? Well, you cant have pharmaceuticals without pharmaceutical companies
The Columbus Dispatch reports that five have been sued byOhio Attorney General, Mike DeWine, on Wednesday for their roles in this human tragedy of epic proportions.
In his suit filed in a state court in Chillicothe, one of the areas hardest hist by the epidemic DeWine blames pharmaceutical companies and their aggressive sales tactics for creating the pill mills.
In 2014, for example, with the crisis well underway, pharmaceutical companies spent $168 million on ...
