In a new legal strategy against the opioid industry, Pueblo County has sued not only pharmacy companies that manufacture and wholesale the drug but grocery-store and pharmacy chains that sell directly to its residents, including dozens who died of drug overdoses.
“This case arises from the worst man-made epidemic in modern medical history — the misuse, abuse and over-prescription of opioids,” says the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Denver U.S. District Court.
Pueblo hired Illinois and New York City attorneys to not only go after drug manufacturing and wholesaling giants, including Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., but also retailers such as retailer Walmart, the grocer Kroger and Walgreens.
The 280-page lawsuit — which is seeking unspecified actual and punitive damages; injunctive relief to stem the opioid epidemic; and attorney’s fees — claims that drug companies used fraudulent tactics to hook patients on prescription medications, including Oxycodone and Hydrocodone.
The Pueblo lawsuit follows a series of similar lawsuits filed by cities and counties across the nation, including Colorado.
This lawsuit targets pharmaceutical manufacturers of prescription opioids and businesses along the supply chain, including wholesalers, grocery stores and pharmacies.
The number of opioid overdoses in the U.S. rose from 8,000 in 1999 to more than 33,000 in 2015.
The lawsuit describes how Pueblo County has been impacted by the opioid crisis.
In 2015, at least 44 people died from opiate overdoses in Pueblo County. There were 125 emergency-room visits involving prescription opioids, the lawsuit says.
Drug-overdose deaths have steadily increased in Colorado. In 2017, opioid painkillers claimed 357 lives, a record for Colorado, according to preliminary figures from the state health department.
The opioid crisis has evolved in Pueblo County with addicts turning to heroin, fentanyl, and carfentanil, the lawsuit says.
“As a practical and financial matter, the county has been saddled with an enormous economic burden. Nearly every department in the County is affected by the opioid crisis caused by Defendants in some manner,” the lawsuit says.
Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general across the country that is investigating whether, and possibly how, drug manufacturers broke any laws in marketing opioids.
Huerfano County was the first local government in Colorado to file such a suit, but the county isn’t alone nationally. Around the country, Philadelphia and Delaware filed lawsuits. More than a dozen counties in New York filed similar lawsuits last year. A case filed by the city of Chicago in 2014 remains active.