CHARLESTON – A historian of opioid use and drug policy testified, in a federal trial against three major opioid distributors Wednesday, about three principal opioid epidemics that preceded the ongoing crisis.
The City of Huntington and Cabell County sued the “Big Three” drug distributors – McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health – in 2017 over their role in the overdose crisis, after more than 80 million doses of the drugs were sent to the area in an eight-year period.
Wednesday is the third day in the bench trial at the Charleston federal courthouse. Farrell | farrell.law
Under questioning from plaintiffs lawyer Paul Farrell Jr., David Courtwright, who wrote The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business, said the first epidemic, in the late 1900s, came from widespread medicinal use of opioids.
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(Reuters) - The three largest U.S. drug distributors, facing their first trial over claims that they fueled the opioid crisis, said responsibility for ballooning painkiller sales lies with doctors, drugmakers and regulators.
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AmerisourceBergen Corp, McKesson Corp and Cardinal Health Inc are defending themselves against a lawsuit brought by the city of Huntington and Cabell County in West Virginia.
“We intend to prove the simple truth that the distributor defendants sold a mountain of opioid pills into our community, fueling the opioid epidemic,” Paul Farrell, a lawyer for Cabell County, said in his opening statement in Charleston, West Virginia federal court.
Opioid Distributors Sold ‘Mountain of Pills,’ Lawyer Tells Judge By Jef Feeley and Katherine Chiglinsky | May 4, 2021
The biggest drug distributors in the U.S. were accused of swamping a West Virginia county with millions of doses of painkillers as testimony is set to begin in the first trial over the companies’ role in the opioid crisis.
McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp. wrongfully “sold a mountain of opioid pills into our community, fueling the opioid epidemic,” Paul Farrell, a lawyer for Cabell County, told a judge Monday in his opening statement. The county and the city of Huntington want distributors to pay $2.6 billion to beef up treatment and policing budgets strained by years of opioid overdoses and addictions.
US Federal Building in Charleston. F. Brian Ferguso
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If the first day of a landmark trial involving the nation’s three largest opioid distributors is any indication, a lot of fingers will be pointed elsewhere by those distributors in the coming weeks.
At the start of the trial on Monday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, lawyers for the three companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson blamed the opioid crisis on doctors who wrote too many prescriptions for highly addictive pain pills.