The Shadow
LOW?MOOR — Alleghany County is joining a growing list of Virginia localities that are filing suit against prescription opioid manufacturers and distributors.
The lawsuits are accusing the defendants of aggressively persuading doctors to prescribe opioids and turn patients into drug addicts for their own profit.
Tuesday, the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors voted to approve joining other localities that have filed class-action lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
The county will be retained by the law firms of Sanford, Heisler, Sharp LLP?and Kaufman and Canoles.
All of the lawsuits filed in Virginia allege that each defendant contributes to the opioid crisis in Virginia.
The suits allege that:
— Drug manufacturers make the drugs and misrepresent the truth about their benefits and addiction risks to doctors and patients.
— Wholesale distributors ignore their responsibilities to report and stop suspicious orders of opioids leading to drug diversion to the black market.
— Pharmacy benefit managers leverage their role as middlemen to increase the flow of opioids into the marketplace.
The defendants in the lawsuits include manufacturers Purdue Pharma, Abbott Laboratories, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals; Teva Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon Inc., Barr Laboratories Inc., Actavis Pharma, Watson Laboratories Inc., Allergan PLC, and Insys Therapeutics.
Distributors named in the suits are: AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and McKesson Corp.
Pharmacy benefits managers named in the suits are: Express Scripts Inc., CVS Health; United Health Group Inc. and OptumRx Inc.
The lawsuits allege that the opioid crisis in Virginia has killed thousands of residents, while causing thousands more to suffer dire health consequences.
The suits also allege that the opioid crisis has cost counties and cities across the Virginia hundreds of millions of dollars by increasing the costs of law enforcement and court services, foster care and child placement services, and other services for which local communities have had to bear the cost.
The lawsuits aim to recover those costs.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring says that since 2007, more than 8,000 people in Virginia have died from an opioid overdose, including 5,000 from a prescription opioid overdose.
Herring filed a lawsuit last June in Tazewell County Circuit Court accusing Purdue Pharma of profiting “from an opioid crisis that it helped create and prolong through a decades-long campaign of lies and misrepresentations in violation of the Virginia Consumer Protection Act.”
Several other states are also suing Purdue Pharma.
