Opioid Makers on Trial in West Virginia After 700 People in 1 County Overdosed and Died
On 5/13/21 at 4:48 PM EDT
Associated Press reported.
The West Virginia city of Huntington and surrounding Cabell County sued the national distribution companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson after hundreds of residents overdosed and died from opioid addiction from 2015 to 2020.
The trial opened in federal court this month and marks just one of 3,000 lawsuits filed in federal courts in the Northern District of Ohio, as the region grapples with an opioid crisis that has shattered communities over several years.
During the trial, an expert witness for the region used data compiled by the federal government to show that pharmaceutical distributors shipped nearly 128 million doses of prescription opioids to the Cabell County from 2006 to 2014—equating to more than 140 per resident each year,