Johnson & Johnson fined $570m over US opioid crisis

JOHNSON & Johnson, the US pharmaceutical giant, has been ordered to pay $572million (£468million) to the state of Oklahoma in the first court case to find a drug company responsible for fuelling America’s opioid epidemic.

The company was sued by Oklahoma and, in a landmark ruling, a judge said it had contributed to a “public nuisance” through deceptive promotion of highly addictive prescription painkillers.

Following the seven-week court case, in Oklahoma, Judge Thad Balkman said: “Those actions compromised the health and safety of thousands of Oklahomans. The opioid crisis is an imminent danger and menace to Oklahomans. It has ravaged the state of Oklahoma. It must be abated immediately.”

It was the first case to reach court among thousands being brought against pharmaceutical companies by state and local governments.

Around 2,000 such civil actions have been consolidated and are due to go before a judge in Ohio in October. Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal the Oklahoma decision. Before the case began the state of Oklahoma had already reached a $270 million (£221 million) settlement with Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, and an $85million (£70 million settlement with Israeli-owned Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

During the trial the state argued that Johnson & Johnson had carried out a long marketing campaign understating the risks of addiction to its painkillers, and overstating their effects on chronic pain. The state’s lawyers called the company an opioid “kingpin” motivated by greed.

A total of 4,653 people died from opioid overdoses in Oklahoma from 2007 to 2017, according to the state government.

Lawyers for Johnson & Johnson had denied wrongdoing, arguing that the company’s marketing claims had scientific support and that its painkillers, Duragesic and Nucynta, accounted for only a tiny fraction of the opioids prescribed by doctors in Oklahoma.

They also said Johnson & Johnson had been heavily regulated by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, and the US Food and Drug Administration.