Quebec court approves class-action alleging opioid makers misled users

MONTREAL — A Quebec Superior Court judge has authorized a class-action lawsuit against 16 pharmaceutical companies that are alleged to have misled consumers about the efficacy and dangers of opioid medications.

The suit alleges the companies knew how addictive the drugs were but deliberately misrepresented those risks, leading users to become dependent.

“Traditionally, opioids were used in a very limited way medically,” said Margo Siminovitch, one of the lawyers behind the lawsuit. “And then in the mid1990s a new narrative emerged.”

That new narrative involved pharmaceutical companies promoting the use of opioids as safe for a wide range of chronic pain conditions, ranging from headaches, to back pain and rheumatoid arthritis, she said Tuesday. “Doctors were told that if they didn’t promote opioids and use them for their patients, they were doing their patients a disservice, and it just took off.”

Siminovitch said the lawsuit’s representative plaintiff, JeanFrançois Bourassa, has a typical story.

Bourassa, who owned a roofing company, was prescribed opioids after he fell on the job in 2005 and suffered multiple fractures. Over the next decade, he was prescribed a range of opioids but says he was never warned by a doctor or pharmacist about any risks, according to Justice Gary D.D. Morrison’s April 10 decision authorizing the class-action.

By 2012, Morrison said, Bourassa was being prescribed the “maximum dose,” but over the following years, the medication stopped having any effect. In 2017, he sought medical treatment for opioid addiction. It was at that time he learned about the dangers of the drugs.

Bourassa was diagnosed with severe opioid use disorder, and completed treatment for his addiction at a Montreal hospital. Yet after he left the treatment program, he received another opioid prescription from his doctor, at a lower dose than before. As a result, he was readmitted into a drug rehab program in 2018.

In court, Bourassa described his experience with opioids as “hell on Earth.”

The class-action includes everyone in Quebec who was prescribed opioid medications made by the 16 defendant pharmaceutical companies between 1996 and the present, and who was subsequently diagnosed with opioid use disorder.

Opioids that are not included in the lawsuit are OxyContin and OxyNEO, which were the subject of a separate national classaction lawsuit that has since been settled, and those that were exclusively used in hospitals. Several companies named when the suit was first proposed but that had limited activities in Quebec have already settled.

Siminovitch said she doesn’t know how many people might be included in the class-action lawsuit. About 15 per cent of Quebec residents are prescribed opioids every year, she said, adding that five per cent to 10 per cent become dependent or addicted.