J&J Fights Back Over Okla.'s Move On State’s Opioid Crisis

J&J Fights Back Over Okla.'s Move On State’s Opioid Crisis

Introduction

On Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) asked the Oklahoma state court judge to limit the payouts concerning the state's opioid crisis for one year.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, along with state’s two senior legislators, filed a proposed amicus brief on October 28, explaining that J&J should continue to fund abatement costs over several years, and the state’s taxpayers should not bear the costs. The move is a part of the $572 million court judgment issued on August 26, which was intended to wane the opioid crisis. During the August hearing by Cleveland County District Court Judge Thad Balkman, J&J stated that there were “gaps in the state’s evidence,”  for the costs to go beyond a year. 

The governor and senior legislators also intervened during the settlements with Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals to make sure that the funds went to Oklahoma’s treasury.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis.