From the linked WaPo article, which has a slightly more focused analysis of the opiod epidemic imo: ... The numbers of pills the companies sold during the seven-year time frame are staggering, far exceeding what has been previously disclosed in limited court filings and news stories. The opioid epidemic began with prescription pills, spawned increased heroin use and then resulted in the current fentanyl crisis, which added more than 67,000 to the death toll from 2013 to 2017.The companies, in turn, have blamed the epidemic on overprescribing by doctors and pharmacies, and on customers who abused the drugs. The companies say they were working to supply the needs of patients with legitimate prescriptions desperate for pain relief.
The drug companies like to act that they don't have salespeople. "Oh... the doctors just filled out an order form for more! We had no idea what they were DOING with all the drugs they were ordering!" BULLSHIT. When you fulfill shipments of 250,000 oxycontin to a town of 3,000 people in Florida, someone in your organization is going to notice. Some salesguy is getting a BIG bonus for hitting his numbers. Someone is gonna wonder why Bob is selling so many more in Kissimmee, FL, than their salesguy in Atlanta. This whole big-pharma sham of "not knowing" how/where the prescriptions were going is absolute bullshit. Even the DEA got the info from secondary sources. We KNOW the primary sources HAD to know about it, because the secondaries did. I hope they roast in hell.
What concerns me, is that at least in the Oklahoma case as far as I know, they're resting on some compelling philosophy for their defense . . . Oklahoma's legal team based its entire case on a claim of public nuisance, which refers to actions that harm members of the public, including injury to public health. Burch says each state has its own public nuisance statute, and Oklahoma's is very broad. "Johnson & Johnson, in some ways, is right to raise the question: If we're going to apply public nuisance to us, under these circumstances, what are the limits?" Burch says. "If the judge or an appellate court sides with the state, they are going to have to write a very specific ruling on why public nuisance applies to this case." Burch says the challenge for Oklahoma has been to tie one opioid manufacturer to all of the harms caused by the ongoing public health crisis, which includes people struggling with addiction to prescription drugs, but also those harmed by illegal street opioids, such as heroin. University of Kentucky law professor Richard Ausness agrees that it's difficult to pin all the problems on just one company. "Companies do unethical or immoral things all the time, but that doesn't make it illegal," Ausness says. Not gonna lie, I don't know what's gonna happen.But the legal strategy is complicated. Unlike the tobacco industry, from which states won a landmark settlement, the makers of prescription opioids manufacture a product that serves a legitimate medical purpose, and is prescribed by highly trained physicians — a point that Johnson & Johnson's lawyers made numerous times during the trial.