SafeScript Pharmacies #6, is pictured on Feb. 20, 2012, in downtown Huntington. The target of a federal investigation, an analytics expert testified at a trial Monday against opioid wholesalers that prior to the pharmacy s closure, AmerisourceBergen had been shipping it an average of 35,500 oxycodone doses a month, about seven times the national average.
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.
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) Witness testimony has begun in a landmark opioid trial in which local governments in West Virginia have sued three large drug distributors accused of fueling the opioid epidemic.
Cabell County and the city of Huntington argue that drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp created a “public nuisance” by flooding the area with 80 million opioid doses over eight years and ignoring the signs that the community was being ravaged by addiction.
Similar lawsuits have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements, but this is the first time allegations have wound up at federal trial. The result could have huge effects on hundreds of similar lawsuits that have been filed across the country.
CHARLESTON – The landmark federal trial against drug distributors McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health over their role in the opioid epidemic began May 3 in Charleston.
During Monday s opening arguments for the bench trial at the federal courthouse, attorneys for the plaintiffs – the City of Huntington and the Cabell County Commission – told Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Faber they plan to put forth records and testimony showing the drug distributors knew their role in the crisis and could foresee the harm.
Meanwhile, the defendants said the plaintiffs couldn’t prove a direct causal link between distribution and the crisis. Williams