Lord Protector James Tiberius Hood issued the following statement.
The effort to hold companies accountable for their role in the statewide opioid epidemic continues with a new lawsuit filed by the State of Mississippi against multiple opioid distributors, announced Attorney General Jim Hood.
The State filed a complaint in Hinds County Circuit Court against opioid distributors Cardinal Health, Inc., McKesson Corporation, and AmerisourceBergen Corporation for failing to prevent the diversion of opioids in Mississippi. The lawsuit alleges that these three companies, who distribute the majority of highly addictive opioids, have failed to prevent the diversion of those drugs by breaching their legal duties to monitor, detect, investigate, refuse, and report suspicious orders of opioids, which the Complaint states is a violation of the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act. As a result, Mississippi has been flooded with opioids and is suffering an ongoing public health crisis.
The State is seeking to curtail the massive flow of opioids being shipped into the State by these defendants which are then diverted into elicit markets.
“In 2017 alone, Mississippi had enough opioids supplied to provide 61 pills for every man, woman, and child in the State,” General Hood said. “If these distributors were attending to their supply rates, they would realize that amount of pills is way too large for a state the size of Mississippi. These companies must own up to their contribution to this deadly crisis, and I intend on holding them fully accountable.”
In 2017, there were over 3.3 million opioid prescriptions dispensed in Mississippi. That number equates to 182,882,444 opioid dosage units or 501,048 dosage units every day for 2017. The attorney general’s lawsuit against Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen will hold them responsible for their role in saturating Mississippi with opioids by failing in their duty under the law to report, investigate, and halt suspicious orders. The complaint alleges that if these companies had done what they were legally obligated to do, the opioid epidemic would not be what it is today.
“These very distributors have been subjected to enforcement actions and fines by the DEA for hundreds of millions of dollars for previously allowing the diversion of opioids to occur, yet they failed to take meaningful action to stop it,” General Hood said. “We will not allow them to continue getting away with this in Mississippi.”
General Hood led the nation in filing the first lawsuit on behalf of a state against multiple drug manufacturing companies for falsely marketing opioids as rarely addictive. The suit was filed in December 2015 in Hinds County Chancery Court against five of the largest opioid manufacturers. One of the companies in that suit, Purdue along with three of its executives, plead guilty in 2007 to federal charges and paid more than $600 million in fines related to intentional misrepresentations as to the addictiveness of OxyContin. General Hood charges that the companies deceived Mississippi Medicaid, doctors, and consumers in order to boost profits at the expense of innocent victims.
38 comments:
Opioid addiction is an issue too complicated to be left to the politicians. There is no easy fix. Lay off of it, Hoodmeister.
Heck, I wouldn't mind my wife being able to get a prescription for a low regimen of decent painkillers to keep her from talking about suicide all the time, rather than them kidney-killing NSAIDs and Tramadol that don't even work.
It don't seem to matter that she's got three years of hospital receipts proving her nerves are degenerating.
Way I see it, most of you addicts are white, anyway, so she hardly falls into the pool of "usual suspects."
Leave it to a bunch of dumb pillbillys to screw it up for the real sufferers.
Another shakedown. Who are Hood's hired guns on this one?
And that damned Brown Bottling Company is to blame for all the obese people in Mississippi who have blue placards hanging from their mirrors.
This fight became attractive for Hood when his buddy Mike Moore filed suit...
Hood going after the manufacturer again.
Yes, we realize it is the only way he can provide money for his contributors to finance his campaigns. Don't go after the folks that are abusing the product, be it providers acting improperly in writing scripts, or dispensers, or users. Its all them damn folks that produce the products that serve a real purpose when properly used.
Keep it up General - another one of your hunts to feed your mass tort buddies.
61 pills per resident?
Bullshit.
Prove it.
I agree with 5:28. Drug companies shouldn't be required to test or prove their drugs are safe or non addictive and if they lie about such things who really cares? They have a responsibility to their share holders to sell as much as possible.
Mike Moore got hired to represent the state. Who else!
6:29 - that number is easy to prove using data from the prescription monitoring system, when I had access to the reports I was astounded by the number of doses dispensed in the state...
Dick the butcher had the solution to all this years ago.
61 tablets, a single tablet is not a dose; read a prescription label for most pain killers (depending on the mg dose),
"take 1-2 tablets every 4 to six hours as needed for pain'."
61/12 tablets = 5 days of treatment
61/6 tablets = 10 days of treatment
Not a lot of abusing going on here sir general.
Politician throwing out numbers they know nothing about, what you hope is that these guys show up with a need for their family member and the prescriber reminds them of their fear of addicting them and gives them an Nsaid and tells them to deal with it. Let them hear a loved one in pain and not have the ability to do a dang thing about it because of absolute greed/lies/ignorance by trial lawyers and politicians
too complicated for hood...seen this going round and round and he want to get on the merry go round!
@9:04
61 pills for every resident of the state. Not all 3 million people of this State need a 10 day dose.
@ 11:41
Since you are medical professional what would be the appropriate dose and number of tablets you think are appropriate?
By the way, again, It could be a 5 day supply, depending on the dose and need.
But let me do some simple math for you.
Suppose it is 500,000 patients, then that goes to a 30 day supply, 250,000 patients a 60 day supply. So on and so on and on.
I will say this twice, and slowly for you, ."The "pill' is not a 'dose',
But let's look at those 250,000 patients with a 60 day supply. 25,000 have had 2 steel cages fused around their spine and are on daily medication for the rest of their life. That may mess up the AG numbers you like to throw around.
But wait, there are terminal patients taking 12-16 tablets an hour on home hospice, now they may not last but 6 months or less but surely these people are addicts and we need the Junior AG patrol to determine this as well!
Then there are the horrible people who have had surgery from trauma and are in rehab for their injuries for months, we must not let them have more than the AG patrol says is appropriate.
The "pill' is not a 'dose', but you throw out numbers you are ignorant about.
The point is, you like the AG and MBN director are not prescribers and have no clue as to what is going on with patients.
Kind of like the push to limit over the counter Sudafed to stop the meth problem, now that the meth problem is 'solved' by the AG patrol officers like you do you think this will turn out better?
As I said before, maybe one of your family members will be on the receiving end of your 'expertise' of prescribing and you can tell them what a wonderful thing you did for them.
,
So, the conversation quickly changes from the public dissection of a greedy politician to one of who can 'out-math' the other? Surely there will be a way to connect this with Jackson pot-holes.
Band music resumes....
The Sudafed regulations worked, right? No more meth. *sarcasm*. So, this is bound to stop all of the opioid abuse.
At least Mississippi leads the nation in AGs who can extort money. No crimes, just extorting money because the AG has an unlimited budget to and the backing of a state to obfuscate facts against a business.
How about putting forth some information on how much is legit prescriptions for people after surgeries, length of prescription and dosages (cancer, accidents, chronic pain, etc) vs what is suspected as abuse. How about trying to actually do some work and track down docs who are dispensing prescriptions illegitimately.
Extorting money from businesses (whether the business is evil or not) who are not committing crimes, conspiracies, fraud, etc is wrong and shouldn't be the work of the state AG's office.
It is the office of the Attorneys General that are committing fraud with things such as this.
Folks sure get riled up when government comes after their pills.
Per the NIH, obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Medical marijuana. Like my girlfriend used to say, it doesn’t have to be so hard.
I'm one of the ones who had a long term encounter with these drugs, due to a catastrophic accident. There's a baby in that bathwater, and it should be considered that there are people for whom these drugs make life livable, or maybe just bearable.
AG Hood needs to worry more this five minutes about having ignored prosecutorial misconduct by a prosecutor whose egregious abuse of his position is well documented by the MS Supreme Court.
Thanks to the In the Dark podcast, Hood will lose more votes in the urban areas of MS than his buddy, Doug Evans, can deliver in the Delta. Hood will be " collateral damage" in the soon to be national scandal.
The little credibility the MS Bar has left will be collateral damage as well. They long ago should have dealt with Doug Evans whose Brady violations and prosecutorial misconduct in well documented in our court system.
For those of you who don't do podcast, go to www.inthedark.org and look at Season 2...The Tardy Furniture Store Murders in Winona. You'll hear and see more evidence than any of the 6 juries got to see.
Neither the victims and certainly, not the accused who has sat on death row for 21 years, has gotten justice. Instead, all have been victims of unethical people who apparently care only about their own agendas. They all now have blood on their hands.
Mississippi's image will take another hit if there's a film and surely there will be if it's not already done.
Robert Shuler Smith looks like an angel when compared to Doug Evans.
Any lawyer or judge or law enforcement officer reading this needs to think long and hard about better policing of their profession before the entire system is destroyed beyond repair.
Faith is our justice system is dependent on your ethical behavior and honor. And, you should have a hint that the public is losing faith. Should that faith be completely lost, you can kiss liberty and freedom goodbye!
Hood just lost my vote. I’m watching a loved one suffer and thinking about ending their life since the doctors are too afraid to write these scripts now. There are people out there that need opioids to make life somewhat tolerable.
This isn't about opioids. It's about money. Does anyone think a lawyer cares about the feelings of another human being? There should be some attorney out there taking notes and preparing themselves to sue the people that are suing the drug companies. Only people with chronic pain should be involved with this. Karma would be for Hood and Moore to suffer like thousands of Mississippians. The government will only do what they do best and that is screws things up. A few years from now Mississippi will be the leader in heroin. Get ready.
12:34, you shouldn’t murder someone because they can’t access drugs. That is not ok. Also, what does Hood have to do with the state’s laws regarding opioid prescriptions. If your story is true, it seems like you would be upset with the medical board and legislature. I guess they aren’t Democrats though so that wouldn’t fit your story.
12:34 here. If you think I want to "murder" a loved one then please re-read what I wrote and ask yourself if 1) I should have properly stated " I’m watching a loved one suffer and WATCHING THEM thinking about ending their life or 2) Yep, I'm ready to kill a family member.
It is silly you think I am a Democrat, I want nothing to do with either party as both are dragging this country to hell as well as the party politics, the US vs. THEM mentality.
As for my "story", I hope one day you never have a love one suffer from chronic pain. I don't wish this on any soul on this Earth. Love and compassion are quickly fading from the human spirit in lieu of political malice and apathy.
Peace be with you all.
Please post the names of all the attorneys who will make millions on this lawsuit. I believe John Davidson is one of them.
The Opioid problem is being addressed by punishing the doctors and patients who didn't abuse or over-prescribed the drugs.
There seems to be a myth that anyone who takes an opioid will become helplessly addicted.
I've had both friends and relatives in their later years who relied on opioids to manage their pain. Among these were veterans of WWII.
They took their pills as prescribed and following the directions not to mix with alcohol or certain other medications. They did not drive.
The medication was the difference between being able to live with some semblance of independence or being unable to even move without help.
Also, as a parent, I had no difficulty closely monitoring my child the rare time one was injured in a sporting accident to need pain meds. I also read all the material that was distributed with the pills. This is not hard.
If a loved one in my house had not had a major improvement in pain relief , I would know that I needed a second opinion as the cause of the pain had not been addressed.
We continue to put barriers between the doctor and the patient simply because some doctors and patients were irresponsible and/or unethical. They seem to need an excuse for their bad decisions.
I would also suggest that a patient with a terminal illness or someone over 70 in severe pain is highly unlikely to become the drug addict who is a threat to society.
Like that crooked cynical Chicago mayor said: "Never let a crisis go to waste."
Is "hood-winked" named after him?
Three groups are set to make money thanks to the opioid crisis:
1) Medically Assisted Treatment centers (similar to methadone clinics)
2) Heroin dealers
3) Jim Hood's friends
President Donald Trump is fighting back against the Opioid crisis.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/opioids/
Ding Ding Ding!!!
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Especially #1and #3 Conway Jim doesn't do anything his 'family' can't benefit from
'Three groups are set to make money thanks to the opioid crisis:
1) Medically Assisted Treatment centers (similar to methadone clinics)
2) Heroin dealers
3) Jim Hood's friends"
Why go after the suppliers, all they do is supply the pharmacies. Kinda stupid
Just another boon for the Mexican drug cartels. We sure fixed the meth problem by requiring a prescription for OTC Sudafed. Anything rednecks in the trailer park can do, the drug cartels can do better. The solution to the opioid problem would have been to severely punish the pill mill doctors and let the rest practice medicine, responsibly. Now, the government tells physicians how to treat their patients. A look at prescribing records, considered in light with that doctor’s specialty, type of patients would be enough to see who needs to be shut down and wwho h is trying to treat their patients and alleviate suffering.
Great, because evidently heroin is better than Vicodin, which is what folks turn to when they can't get pain relief.
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