Opioid Class Action Lawsuit Claims Big Pharma, Pharmacy Chains Fueled Nationwide Epidemic

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A proposed class action alleges a longstanding conspiracy among several big-name pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and pharmacy chains to grow the prescription painkiller market effectively fueled the opioid epidemic.

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The sprawling 278-page lawsuit explains that before the 1990s, doctors generally reserved opioid prescriptions as a short-term solution for patients who were terminally ill, battling cancer, suffering acute pain or recovering from surgery. The case alleges Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Allergan and AbbVie—in an effort to increase opioid prescriptions, sales, and profits—collectively carried out a large-scale, often unbranded marketing scheme to deceptively promote the use of their branded opioids to treat chronic pain.

According to the filing, the defendants have spent millions of dollars on a “misinformation campaign” to falsely “deny, trivialize, or materially understate” the risks of opioids—including their highly addictive nature—and overstate the benefits of their long-term use for chronic pain.

The complaint says the companies’ aggressive advertising campaigns have paid off, dramatically increasing opioid prescriptions and use over the past few decades. However, as opioid sales have skyrocketed for the defendants, so have rates of opioid-related substance abuse, hospitalization, and death within the U.S., the filing stresses. In fact, the suit says, there were 10 times more opioid overdose deaths in 2021 than there were in 1999.

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The lawsuit was filed by more than 20 hospitals and related companies operating throughout the South and Midwest. Per the filing, the defendants’ conspiracy to expand the prescription painkiller market has substantially contributed to the opioid epidemic, and has, in turn, overburdened the regions’ healthcare systems and forced the plaintiffs to spend millions treating patients with opioid-related conditions.

To carry out their marketing scheme, the companies at issue circulated a host of unsubstantiated claims about opioids through sales representatives, scientific literature, branded and unbranded marketing materials, patient education materials put out by industry-funded “front groups” that appear unaffiliated, speaker groups lead by doctors paid to promote a pro-opioid message, and more, the opioid lawsuit relays.

These messages included several misrepresentations about the Schedule II drug, including that the risk of addiction from chronic opioid therapy is low, doctors can effectively identify and manage the risk of addiction by using screening tools or questionnaires, or that signs of addictive behavior can merely be “pseudoaddiction,” which purportedly means that a patienjavascript:void(null);t is suffering from under-treatment of their pain and requires more opioids, the complaint says.

“Each of these propositions was false,” the case contends. “[The defendants] knew this, but they nonetheless set out to convince health care professionals, legislatures, and the public at-large of the truth of each of these propositions in order to expand the market for their opioids.”

Also named as defendants in the suit are Cencora, Anda, Cardinal, McKesson, Walgreens, CVS and Walmart—all of which allegedly maintain a “deep level of interaction and cooperation” with pharmaceutical companies to facilitate the oversupply of opioids.

Per the case, federal law requires opioid manufacturers and distributors to maintain “effective controls against diversion,” which occurs when prescription drugs are dispensed to individuals who abuse them or sell them to others to abuse. As part of this legal obligation, companies must implement a system to report and stop suspicious orders, including orders of unusual size or frequency, the suit explains.

The filing alleges the defendants, at every step of the supply chain process, “deliberately disregarded” their duties to halt suspicious orders. In particular, the pharmacy chain and drug distributor defendants routinely allowed customers to make multiple suspicious orders without consequences, and have enjoyed enormous profits from the unimpeded flow of opioids, the complaint claims.

“Publicly available information confirms that [the defendants] ignored red flags of suspicious orders and funneled far more opioids into communities across the United States than could have been expected to serve legitimate medical use,” the complaint says. “The conclusion that [the defendants] were on notice of the problems of abuse and diversion follows inescapably from the fact that they flooded communities with opioids in quantities that they knew or should have known exceeded any legitimate market for opioids—even in the wider market for chronic pain.”

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