Some drug suppliers don’t comply with AG
Attorney General Mike DeWine was only half successful in his demand that eight drug manufacturers and distributors begin negotiations toward a monetary settlement to improve opioid treatment and prevention in Ohio. Saying the companies must pay their “fair share” for deaths caused and addicts created, DeWine on Oct. 30 gave the drugmakers and distributors 30 days to begin discussions. The responses were mixed when the deadline arrived Tuesday.
Four of the companies — manufacturers Teva and Allergen and distributors McKesson and AmerisourceBergen — responded that they are willing to begin talks with DeWine’s office.
Another three — drugmakers Purdue Pharma and Endo, and Dublin-based
distributor Cardinal Health — rejected DeWine’s request. The last, Johnson & Johnson, did not respond.
“It’s been mixed,” DeWine said Friday. “We were trying to see if there was an avenue by which we could settle with these companies, which would result in help for the people in the state of Ohio much sooner than waiting for the lawsuit to reach trial stage and get a result there.”
DeWine’s office sued the five opioid manufacturers for damages in Ross County on May 31, alleging they promoted and peddled huge amounts of painkillers in pursuit of profits while downplaying the addictive nature of the drugs.
The Dispatch submitted a publicrecords request for the drug companies’ responses on Wednesday. DeWine’s office did not provide them until Friday — after the newspaper already had obtained responses directly from three of the companies.
DeWine, the twoterm Republican attorney general and candidate for governor, has signaled he also is considering filing a damages suit against the three distributors, including Ohio’s Cardinal Health.
“We’re still looking at it and trying to complete our analysis of it,” DeWine said. “We’ll let you know shortly.” Ohio recorded 4,050 drugoverdose deaths last year, largely from opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, a 33 percent increase over 2015.
In a letter dated Wednesday, Cardinal Health’s chief legal officer, Craig Morford, wrote DeWine that another meeting between the company and the attorney general’s office would not be productive.
Morford wrote that Cardinal was “disappointed” to learn it may be sued by DeWine, a step “inconsistent with your expressed desire to partner with us to address the problem of opioid abuse in Ohio.”
In an apparent reference to the Ross County lawsuit being handled by private law firms on behalf of DeWine’s office, Morford said the “onslaught of baseless private litigation being brought by contingencyfee lawyers is not a legitimate or productive part of the solution.”
Cardinal said it will continue working toward solutions to ease the opioid crisis. The company announced last month that it will spend $ 10 million, in cooperation with local partners in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, to help provide drug-abuse prevention education and fund other steps to fight the opioidaddiction scourge.
Cardinal has paid at least $ 64 million in settlements, and continues to be sued by governmental entities, to resolve allegations that it fueled opioid addiction by failing to report huge, suspicious orders for the drugs to federal officials.
Two drug manufacturers that refused DeWine’s demand returned fire in letters, criticizing his office for potentially paying millions in legal fees to private law firms and withdrawing from an effort involving 41 state attorneys general investigating and negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry over damages related to opioids.
Endo’s chief legal officer, Matthew Maletta, chastised DeWine, calling him out for what he described as a “false political narrative.” Maletta also wrote that DeWine’s assertion that drugmakers “laid waste to Ohio as only the worst plague could” was “both misinformed and offensive.”
Purdue Pharma general counsel Maria Barton wrote, “Rather than face the possibility of giving away any potential monetary award to trial lawyers instead of Ohioans, we urge you to rejoin a nationwide effort focused on crafting real life solutions to an urgent problem ... Litigation takes years and the costs for both sides are significant.”
DeWine said Ohio withdrew from the multistate effort because it was moving too slowly given “the urgency of the problem in Ohio.”
The lawsuit by the attorney general’s office against drug manufacturers is being pursued by six law firms that would be entitled to a share of any recovery of damages, starting with 25 percent of amounts up to $ 10 million and then additional, but lower, percentages of amounts above that threshold. For example, the lawyers would get $ 8.5 million from a $ 100 million recovery.
DeWine’s office reported Friday, meanwhile, that Ohio’s opioid crisis is apparently accelerating — at least based on one measure.
The number of deadly carfentanil cases involving testing by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation has increased by 380 percent when compared with all of 2016. Fentanyl and related compounds testing are up 46 percent. The lethal synthetic opioids are thousands of times more powerful than heroin.