Posted on 08/28/2019 10:00:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
When General Motors and Ford sell more cars, they are involved in more accidents. They undoubtedly advertise more in those places where they sell more cars. Does that mean that the car companies are responsible for additional accidents in those places? That they are purposefully plotting to create more accidents?
Let’s hope not, but if Monday’s $570 million verdict by an Oklahoma judge against Johnson & Johnson for making opioids is any indication, those types of cases aren’t going to be far off. Oklahoma had refused to settle out of court believing that they could receive a very large verdict. And the actual verdict is much larger than it might appear as it just represents the penalty for damages from a single year.
The state of Oklahoma claimed Johnson & Johnson and other pharmaceutical companies spent tens of millions of dollars annually in direct-to-physician marketing of opioids and that as opioid sales grew, so did addiction and overdoses.
“That’s the message to other states: We did it in Oklahoma. You can do it elsewhere,” Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said on Monday. He said that their case provided a “road map” for other states to follow in holding drugmakers responsible for the deaths and addiction created by the drugs.
Exhibit 1 for Oklahoma’s case has been a set of studies like one in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors claimed they found an “association between pharmaceutical company marketing of opioids to physicians and deaths from prescription opioid overdoses, we found that counties receiving such marketing subsequently experienced elevated mortality. In addition, opioid prescribing rates were strongly associated with the burden of opioid marketing across counties and partly mediated the association between marketing and deaths from opioid overdoses.”
One wonders why such a study was needed, but, as usual, the public health researchers grossly misinterpreted their results. More drug use means more people get addicted, but that doesn’t mean they have done something wrong. The drugs also made life livable for a lot of people. If you think that this is an idea that you have heard about before, you probably have. About 20 years ago this “public nuisance” theory was tried in lawsuits by cities against gun makers. The 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act stopped many cities from simultaneously bringing these suits and bankrupting the gun makers. The law doesn’t protect the gun makers from making faulty products or from lying to customers or if they break the law.
This claim is no different than the car example mentioned earlier. This applies to other cases. More surgeries are more likely to result in more malpractice claims and deaths from those surgeries. Presumably, also the more doctors recommend surgery to their patients (read “marketing”) the more people will have surgery and the more malpractice cases there will be.
Here is one example litigious lawyers might appreciate. More lawyers mean more legal cases and more malpractice cases by lawyers. Should we then sue law schools for producing more lawyers?
With every product, the more that it is used, the number of problems that will arise will be greater. That is true even if the rate of problems is very low.
According to Oklahoma, Johnson & Johnson marketed the drugs irresponsibly. “Many studies show that opioids are rarely addictive when used properly for the management of chronic pain,” was a claim in one of the company’s marketing materials.
Unfortunately, not everyone uses the drugs properly. Just like not everyone drives their car correctly and not all lawyers or doctors practice their professions correctly, Johnson & Johnson’s statement was exactly right. Having people abuse a drug is no different than people driving too fast. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, around 8 to 12 percent misuse opioids and develop an opioid use disorder, with as many as 6 percent transitioning to other drugs such as heroin.
The problem is the cases brought by Oklahoma and numerous other states will be used to create new precedents that will allow cases to be brought against all sorts of other companies. It looks like it is about time that we pass a Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act for all other companies.
Isn’t this guy into guns?
I believe they lost the law suit because they lied to doctors about it’s safety and non-additive properties.
If Ford sold you the car and said you wouldn’t get hurt in a headon collision and you did...well then I guess you could sue them.
non-addictive.
Submit to the State or we will bankrupt you BUMP! Preparing the battlefield ALERT!
Those thoughtless pieces of crap. When you need opioids, nothing else quite does the job. Incredible pain and suffering on the horizon if this is allowed to stand.
This has happened. Vehicles that have roll-over issues that are hidden, etc, and the auto makers lost. In this case, J&J hid the addictive problems while pushing doctors to prescribe it. Further, when some small towns became pill mills, they did nothing to investigate it and stop the misuse.
No evidence presented that demonstrated J&J failed to adhere to any regulations set forth by the state pharmacy board, the FDA or the DEA.
I honestly don’t know if Johnson & Johnson did anything untoward in marketing their drugs in Oklahoma. But I do know the hundred-year-old public nuisance statute under which they prosecuted the case is ridiculously Broad and shouldn’t stand up to constitutional scrutiny. I’m hoping that the Supreme Court of Oklahoma we’ll slap this down, but I’m not totally confident in their ability to show that much courage.
I had shoulder surgery about ten years ago and they gave me a very, VERY powerful pain killer. I came home with them but never took any. Their street value was way too high. :)
The thing is it was the goobermint that encouraged we primary physicians to prescribe more opioids. The literally sent “experts” to CME meetings with the sole purpose of “addressing the 5th Vital Sign” and promising doctors they would be fine if they “added todays’ dose of Rapid Acting to tomorrow’s Base dose and let the patient have access to as much rapid acting as the desire”. Which to anyone with a functioning brain knows is precisely how you create addicts.
It was very similar to the goobermint’s responsibility for The Dust Bowl, another great goobermint disaster.
They went after Deep Pockets. Where is the self-responsibility here? Nobody can make anyone else eat/ drink/ swallow something they don’t want to swallow - parents know that.
No. It’s like corporations paying taxes. They may write the check but the customers pay the money. J&J may write a check for half a billion but their future customers will be the ones who actually pay. Likely the same people who are applauding the settlement will be the same people bitching about the cost of healthcare.
I don’t know. My dad was pretty good at feeding me frozen peas with a belt.
If the Mafia did this to J&J it would be rightly called extortion - protection racket - pay or we put you out of business. Since the government did it it’s still extortion, but the extorters don’t go to jail.
First, kill all the lawyers.
Physicians used to be reluctant to prescribe painkillers even in hospitals. There was this perception that patients were going to abuse the drugs. I kid you not.
Studies were conducted that found that patients were being forced to endure pain rather than be medicated properly. Finally, the message hit home and patients started being given pain killers upon request, if they were experiencing pain. Yes physicians were still the gatekeepers, but they become more willing to be receptive to patient’s pain needs.
I myself spent about ten days in a hospital in the early 1990s. My pain was so acute, I could feel people walking by in the hallway, and it hurt. I know that sounds unlikely, but I would describe it as my pain receptors going down off the bed, across the floor, and out into the hallway. It was painfully stressful when people walked by. It was as if they were coming into contact with me physically, certainly mentally.
I was given several medications to help with the pain. They finally wound up giving me a Morphine pump, with an on demand feature. I was limited as to how much medication I could give myself, but it really helped.
My body had been very tense due to the pain. Once I had the Morphine pump, my body was able to relax.
As my body relaxed, I was able to heal and soon I didn’t need the medication any longer.
When the pump was taken away since I didn’t need it any longer, one physician offered up this gem to me.
“You’re probably pretty sad they took your Morphine drip away?” Here was a guy that somehow could not grasp how much I needed it, the benefits it gave to me, and that it wasn’t an abuse of medication in any way shape or form.
It was still “recreational” to him.
Courts need to be very careful about how they damn the manufacturers for these meds.
I’m alive today because I was able to get that Morphine and relax.
Are there abuses? There may be. Address them. Don’t go all nut-job on the companies. Indict individuals and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
We’re still going to need painkillers.
The drug companies have been looking for non narcotic ways to treat pain for well over a century. IMHO, it ain’t out there. At least there is no drug that will successfully control pain without reacting with an opiate receptor. If it could be done they would have by now. There have been dozens of drugs introduced that claimed to do so. I could rattle off a dozen. There was even a fantasy about “Sodium interactivity” or some voodoo a couple decades ago. It ain’t happening. My personal opinion is legalize everything and let the people who want a doctor’s advice or need a doctor’s advice to see a doctor. Get us out of the recreational pharmaceutical business altogether. Does anybody believe there are people who want drugs that can’t get them? I could see believing that foolishness 20 years ago. Maybe. Not today. There is some truth to the accusation it is our desire for drugs that have damaged large swaths of Latin AMerica. Or course there is more of a lie in it because they were using and making those drugs long before “middle America” ever even discovered them. I have my personal opinions based on 35 years of experience on how to handle various kinds of pain but most of you have already expressed a serious desire to not hear them.
Great posts; thread. Unintended/Intended consequences. Are these “representatives” that stupid/evil? Yes/yes.
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