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You probably nodded your head in agreement when you heard the news about Wilkes-Barre deciding to sue some of the country’s major opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Like Luzerne County and many other towns and states, the city is seeking financial retribution for the opioid crisis deemed “the No. 1 public safety threat” by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro in an interview with the Times Leader editorial board last summer.
The county’s 155 overdose deaths in 2017 make Shapiro’s point even more obvious.
It’s easy to blame the big, bad pharma giants who make OxyContin and Percocet and the companies who help bring these painkillers to market.
Why shouldn’t some of these billion-dollar outfits pay to clean up the mess they helped make?
But there are two sides to every story.
And the other side has an argument worth listening to, even if it doesn’t completely wipe away any culpability.
The Healthcare Distribution Alliance is a trade group representing wholesale drug distributors, including those Wilkes-Barre is suing: Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., and the McKesson Corp.
The city and other plaintiffs allege drugmakers denied the addictive nature of opioids while the distributors failed to properly monitor and report skyrocketing orders.
But the distributors point out they were reporting “every single order to the DEA.” And as the trade association notes, the DEA has long been in charge of “setting the annual production of controlled substances in the market.”
Bottom line: The government had the power to step in years ago but failed.
Now, folks are just trying to cash in.
Remember when the tobacco companies were the bad guys? It led to 1998’s massive tobacco settlement — $206 billion over the first 25 years of the agreement.
But predictably, a lot of the money states received has not been directed to reduce tobacco usage. It’s been used to plug budget holes or — most egregiously — funneled back into the tobacco industry in some cases to help producers, according to the American Lung Association.
If cities and states get major bucks from opioid industry players, do you really trust them to spend it wisely?
Lawsuits aren’t the answer unless you enjoy seeing lawyers get rich.
What will help in both the short and long term is opioid-abuse education and prevention coupled with a push to expand the use of medical marijuana so a new generation of patients suffering with pain don’t run the risk of getting hooked on pills.
In the meantime, municipalities large and small should arm their police forces and other public employees with Narcan, the antidote that reverses opioid ODs. It should be readily available in public spaces as well. Let’s make it as common as those heart defibrillators you see in office hallways and provide training so people know how to administer a life-saving injection.
This is a complex issue. Let’s stop our leaders from taking the easy way out through litigation that will take years to settle and help very little with the root problem.
— Times Leader