Philadelphia Suing Opioid Drug Manufacturers

PHILADELPHIA – The City of Philadelphia has legally joined the fight against the opioid epidemic in the nation by filing a lawsuit against various prescription opioid manufacturers, some of which call the Philadelphia area home.

City officials announced the lawsuit Wednesday, Jan. 17 at a press conference in City Hall.

"The epidemic currently plaguing the City has exacted a grim toll on Philadelphia residents and their families," Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement on the suit. "And the cause can be directly linked to the methods used by manufacturers to market and sell their products to doctors and the public. Those tactics have to end."

The suit alleges Allergan/Actavis in Parsippany, New Jersey; Cephalon and Teva in North Wales, Pennsylvania; Endo in Malvern, Pennsylvania; Janssen in Titsuville, New Jersey; Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Purdue in Stamford, Connecticut employed "deceptive marketing practices" regarding opioid drugs.

The suit also is seeking to force the companies to pay for the costs of treatment of City residents suffering from opioid addiction and opioid use disorder, and to recover costs the City itself has incurred responding to the epidemic, according to officials.

Those costs include first-responders and public health funding; human services programs that treat addicted City residents; increased resources to fund the City’s criminal justice and prison systems; and expenditures to many other City departments and programs affected by the use and abuse of opioids.

The lawsuit also seeks to recoup costs the City spent through its self-funded health insurance plans to purchase opioids for City employees who were prescribed opioids by their doctors.

Specific drugs mentioned in the suit include fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine, and tramadol.

The entire suit is available to review online here.

"This public health crisis harms public safety, order, and economic productivity," City of Philadelphia Solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante said in a statment. "City agencies have incurred large, burdensome, unnecessary and avoidable costs to address the crisis. It is our duty to devote all resources we can to help protect the public from further perils and to finally put an end to the practices which are the root of this epidemic."

The City’s Health Department estimates that one in three adults in Philadelphia has received a prescription for opioids in the past 12 months and one in seven – or some 168,000 – is currently taking these dangerous drugs.

Some of those people become addicted, and every week some overdose on opioids.

The number of fatal overdoses continues to rise in the City, officials said, as the 2017 total is expected to reach 1,200, a roughly 33 percent increase from 2016, according to officials.

According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2016 Philadelphia suffered a rate of overdose deaths per-capita that was fourth highest in the nation and higher than any other large city.

"The opioid crisis is the largest public health crisis this city has seen in a century, and it has been fueled by drug companies," Dr. Thomas Farley, Health Commissioner for Philadelphia, said. "It’s well past time for those companies to stop pushing these drugs and start helping us cope with the human tragedy they have caused."

Overwhelming scientific evidence has shown that the marketing of opioids to treat chronic pain has been the principal causative factor driving the opioid addiction epidemic, the multi-year surge in non-prescription, illegal opioid use including the use of heroin, and the rapid spike in opioid-related overdose deaths, city officials said.

Effects of the crises in Philadelphia can also be seen among the historically high incidences of babies born with opiate withdrawal conditions, increases in new Hepatitis C infections caused by opiate injections, sharp increases in the level of opioid-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations; and the extensive amount of emergency services provided by the Fire Department and other City agencies in reviving and transporting overdose victims, according to city officials.

In addition to the City’s Law Department, the City is represented in the case by David Kairys, and attorneys from Berger & Montague, P.C., Dilworth Paxson, LLP, Sheller, P.C., Sacks Weston Diamond, LLC, Young Ricchiuti, Caldwell & Heller, LLC.

Image via Shutterstock