Washington Attorney General set to take on top US opioid distributors

A trial gets underway on Monday in King County Superior Court, as part of a lawsuit filed by the Washington Attorney General’s Office against the nation’s largest three opioid distributors for their alleged role in the state’s opioid epidemic.

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“My office brought this lawsuit to ask the court to hold these three distributors responsible for their role in fueling the opioid crisis by sending staggering amounts of prescription opioids into the state of Washington,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said. “The three defendants are all Fortune 15 companies and they each take in more gross revenue than the annual budget for the entire state of Washington.”

Washington is the first state in the nation to take the country’s top three largest opioid distributors — McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen – to trial, with several other states taking settlement deals that Ferguson said were woefully insufficient for the damages caused by the opioid crisis in Washington state.

“The opioid crisis has devastated Washington communities and shattered families,” he said. “The epidemic has hit every state and it has hit Washington state especially hard. Since 2006, more than 10,800 Washingtonians have died of opioid overdoses. Many more have had their lives ravaged by opioid use disorders, whether their own or loved ones.”

In a press briefing ahead of the trial start date, Ferguson detailed the numbers, highlighting the impact.

“Thousands of Washingtonians have died of opioid overdoses, and many more have been hospitalized,” he explained. “Between 2000 and 2018, opioid related hospitalizations have quadrupled, from 5.3 to 20.2 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents.”

“Hundreds of babies are born with opioid-related neonatal abstinence syndrome each year, and from 2012 to 2016, the total economic cost of opioid related fatalities in Washington state was over $34 billion,” he added.

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Or, put another way:

“In 2011, more than 112 million daily doses of all prescription opioids were dispensed in the state, enough for a 16-day supply for every Washingtonian, including children,” Ferguson said.

“We believe that the evidence will show that distributors, despite their legal duties, failed to design and operate a system that would prevent the diversion of prescription pills from legitimate use,” he posited. “As a result, a staggering number of prescription opioids flooded into Washington state in the last several decades. Between 2006 and 2014 alone, these companies supplied more than two billion opioid pills to Washington.”

Ferguson outlined a legal strategy focused on the responsibilities of the distributors to not only monitor orders and shipments, but to report and investigate any large, suspicious orders before shipping them out. He says these three companies failed to do just that, fueling an opioid epidemic in Washington state that has devastated so many people.

“During the trial, we will present the court with a plan for Washington to recover from the opioid epidemic, and we will ask the court to order the defendants to fund that plan,” he vowed. “In addition, we will seek penalties for unfair and deceptive conduct. And our objective is to put money back into our communities that have been devastated by the epidemic.”

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