The State of Ohio files a complaint against five pharmaceutical companies accused of playing a major role in the crisis related to the abuse of opioid drugs.
In the United States, two million Americans have developed an addiction to opioid-based pain relievers. Opioid overdoses killed 50,000 people in the country last year, according to authorities citing a major public health crisis … to which pharmaceutical companies may not be completely foreign.
The Ohio Minister of Justice has decided to file a complaint against five companies that manufacture these drugs. Mike DeWine accuses Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Allergan, Endo and Purdue Pharma of underestimating the side effects of their painkillers with prescribers and of ignoring the high risk of addiction to these molecules through aggressive and deceptive marketing.
“Smooth speeches, glossy brochures”
“In 2014 alone, pharmaceutical companies spent $ 168 million on their sales representatives to influence opioid prescriptions and woo physicians through slick speeches and glossy brochures that minimize risk.” and inflate profits, denounced Mike DeWine at a press conference on Wednesday, quoted by the American media.
The state of Ohio is among the most affected by these deadly addictions. Between 2011 and 2015, 3.8 billion doses were prescribed there. The turnover of this drug class, the most prescribed in the United States, amounted to 11 billion dollars in 2014 across the country and will reach 17 billion dollars by 2021, according to projections.
One in five Ohio residents is on an opioid
In Ohio, in 2016 alone, 2.3 million people were prescribed opiates … or a fifth of the state’s population, argued the justice minister. “Ohio forensic pathologists are struggling to keep a count of the dead”, as the rate of overdoses is high, further deplored Mike DeWine.
Ohio is the second US state to initiate legal proceedings against opiate manufacturers, after Mississippi.
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