PATTERSON — The city council has joined the effort to hold Big Pharma accountable for the opioid crisis.
On Tuesday, the council voted unanimously to become one of the Louisiana communities represented by a group of attorneys in a possible lawsuit to reclaim the financial costs of opioid abuse.
According to several sources, the human and monetary toll of opioid abuse is growing in Louisiana. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that 7.7 people per 100,000 residents died from opioid overdoses in Louisiana in 2016, which is just more than half the national rate. But Louisiana’s rate has more than tripled since 2011.
In 2014, the institute said, health care providers wrote 4.8 million opioid prescriptions in Louisiana, which has a population of only 4.5 million.
The Women’s Grace Program and the United Health Foundation recently announced a $1.2 million grant to help pregnant women safely deal with opioid addiction, based on a Centers for Disease Control study of 28 states that found addiction among expectant mothers has quadrupled over the last 15 years.
In Patterson on Tuesday, attorneys Joe Burke and Mike Stag said the target of the potential lawsuit is the pharmaceutical industry, not local doctors and pharmacies. The negotiations and any lawsuits may focus on allegations that drug distributors downplayed the addictive nature of opioid medications when they dealt with health care providers.
The result has been increased spending for health care, incarceration, police investigations, coroners and more, the attorneys said.
“What we’re trying to do,” Stag told the council, “is recover taxpayer money.”
Stag said the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t have many political friends on the opioid issue. He said both Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry have talked about the threat posed by opioid abuse.
“The governor and the attorney general don’t agree on much,” Stag said, “but they agree (on opioids).”
The drug industry is pushing back. In a statement to The Daily Review after the Morgan City Council agreed to participation in the lawsuit last month, Dr. John Parker of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance offered this statement:
“The misuse and abuse of prescription opioids is a complex public health challenge that requires a collaborative and systemic response that engages all stakeholders. Given our role, the idea that distributors are responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and is regulated. Those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation.”
The attorneys who will now represent Patterson and communities in 19 other parishes are taking the cases on a contingency basis, in which their fees are paid only if they successfully reach a settlement or win damages in a lawsuit. Stag said the attorneys’ share of any judgment would be 25 percent for the first $10 million, 20 percent for the next $5 million, and 15 percent of anything over $20 million.
City Attorney Russel Cremaldi spoke in favor of action on opioids.
“I hardly know of a family that hasn’t been touched by it,” Cremaldi said.
Morgan City, the St. Mary Sheriff’s Office and the St. Mary Parish Council have already signed on to the lawsuit.