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b_b  ·  2491 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ohio Sues 5 Major Drug Companies For 'Fueling Opioid Epidemic'

I don't know the facts of the case, but I imagine that the main thrust of the lawsuit is that the side effects were either undersold or ignored altogether by the manufacturer. When Oxycontin was first introduced, the manufacturer went to great lengths to say in their marketing that "less than 1% of people who take pain medicine for pain become addicts." They repeated this line over and over, and they ignored all the contrary evidence. Malicious intent or fraud notwithstanding, I think it could be argued that many pain medicines are defective products, and have caused great injuries to many legal users of them. Although I'm sympathetic to the argument that people bear a lot of the responsibility for this problem themselves, for the above reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if lawsuits like these prove to be successful.