Wednesday November 10, 2021
Complicity in the drug crisis
US court overturns J&J from opioid ruling
The opioid crisis kills hundreds of thousands of Americans. A historic judgment from 2019 attested the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson complicity in the spread of addictive pain relievers. Now a court is rowing back.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has overturned a historic judgment on the role of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson in the opioid crisis. A judge fined the company $ 465 million in 2019 for alleging that J&J was complicit in the spread of opioids due to the “misleading” marketing of addictive painkillers. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has now ruled that the judge should not have relied on the “public nuisance” section.
Allergan, Endo Health Solutions, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries were accused of deliberately concealing or playing down in their marketing that the prescription pain relievers can be addictive. Many of the addicted patients later switched to drugs such as heroin or synthetic opiates.
Several corporations, including J&J, agreed to a billion-dollar settlement at the end of July. The money should be used to finance treatments and preventive measures, among other things. As a result of the settlement, numerous claims for damages pending in court were settled. J&J also announced in June that it had stopped manufacturing and selling prescription opioid drugs in the United States.
According to the CDC, over half a million people have died from excessive use of opioids in the United States in the past 20 years. Pharmaceutical companies have been sued in dozens of US states and counties in connection with the crisis. The companies are accused of downplaying the risks of strong opioid pain relievers out of greed for profit.