This JoCo suburb just became the latest local government to sue the opioid industry
Overland Park this week became the latest of more than 1,000 state and local governments nationwide to sue the major players in the prescription opioid industry.
The Kansas suburb joined in arguing that opioid makers and distributors caused a public health crisis by misleading doctors about the dangers of the drugs and allowing suspiciously large shipments to flood into their jurisdictions.
“These actions have greatly enriched the manufacturers and distributors who have profited immensely from the rampant overuse, abuse and addiction to prescription opioids that exists in the city of Overland Park, in Kansas and in the United States,” says the suit filed in federal court Wednesday by attorneys at Kansas City firm Wagstaff & Cartmell.
Cities, counties and states across the country are looking to recover money from major opioid companies to pay for the law enforcement and health costs of an addiction epidemic that they say has also led thousands of Americans to try illegal heroin.
Overland Park is one of at least 19 cities and counties in Kansas and Missouri that have filed similar lawsuits, including Kansas City and Jackson County, which filed theirs earlier this year.
The more than 1,000 legal actions nationwide are being consolidated in a federal court in Cleveland, where the judge has urged the parties involved to reach a master settlement similar to one forged between states and tobacco companies in 1998. Last month the judge rebuffed the opioid companies’ request to dismiss one of the suits, and trials are scheduled to start next year.
Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Oxycontin, is one defendant out of dozens named in the Overland Park suit. Purdue pushed back against similar lawsuits in a statement to Reuters earlier this year, saying its drugs make up just 2 percent of all opioid prescriptions and it was disappointed it couldn’t reach out-of-court agreements with the plaintiffs.
The Overland Park suit says that Kansas had an opioid prescription rate of 93.8 retail prescriptions per year per 100 people in 2012, which ranked 16th highest in the nation (though the rate was only 66.9 per 100 people in Johnson County). The state’s rate of emergency room visits due to opioid misuse in 2015 was 101 per 100,000 people, and there were 146 opioid-related overdose deaths in Kansas in 2016.
Kansas state agencies hosted the second annual opioid conference Thursday in Topeka, with 400 law enforcement, health and addiction professionals gathering to discuss ways to stem the epidemic in the state.
This story was originally published November 15, 2018 at 11:24 AM.