CHARLESTON – As the federal trial against three major opioid distributors continued, data showing pharmacies in Huntington and Cabell County were ordering well above the national average of controlled substances, some ordering more than five times the national average.
Cabell County and the City of Huntington sued the three largest pharmaceutical distribution companies – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. – in 2017 claiming the companies were largely responsible for the opioid crisis after the companies shipped more than 81 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to the county of just 100,000 residents between 2006 and 2014.
At the start of the May 18 testimony, officials from AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health objected to the number of documents the plaintiffs were presenting for possible use during examination the previous evening, stating it was unfair that the plaintiffs did not give a subset list of the known documents to be used during questi
CHARLESTON – The program director for Huntington s Quick Response Team and Cabell EMS employee testified during the first federal trial against the “Big Three” opioid distributors over their role in the drug crisis that Cabell County does have data tying prescription drug use to illegal drug use, and to an overwhelming impact of the drug crisis on the community and first responders.
Meanwhile, the drug distributors – McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health – sought to put the focus on the role of prescribers, as well as health officials decision not to go after distributors earlier.
The City of Huntington and Cabell County sued the distributors 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.
CHARLESTON – During the third day of a federal trial against three major opioid distributors, lawyers for the City of Huntington and Cabell County sought to make the case that the ongoing drug crisis was predictable, as well as tied to the use of prescription painkillers.
On May 5, attorneys called David Courtwright, a historian of opioid use and drug policy, as well as Dr. Rahul Gupta, who was West Virginia’s health officer and commissioner of the state’s Bureau for Public Health from 2015-2018, to testify in the bench trial at the Charleston federal courthouse.
Gupta testified, at one point, that there was not “one iota of doubt” that prescription drug use led to illegal drug use. Defendants have said there is no proof of a direct causal link and objected to his testimony dozens of times.
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.
CHARLESTON While opioid distributors have argued there is no proof of connection between prescription painkiller use and illicit drug use, an expert in the neurobiology of addiction said, during the second day of a landmark federal trial against those distributors, that people who take prescription painkillers and illicit opioids see the same changes in their brain chemistry.
Dr. Corey Waller, an Michigan doctor with expertise in pain and substance use disorder, testified May 4 at the federal courthouse in Charleston. Lawyers for the City of Huntington and Cabell County, which sued the “Big Three” drug distributors, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health in 2017 over their role in the drug crisis, called him to testify.