Opioid Makers Face Criminal Investigation

Opioid Makers Face Criminal Investigation

Introduction

A criminal investigation is being started by federal prosecutors against pharmaceutical companies, stating whether the makers and distributors intentionally supported to flood the community with the addictive painkiller opioid.

According to a regulatory filing, around six companies, including drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Mallinckrodt PLC, Johnson & Johnson, and Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc. and distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp. and McKesson Corp., have received grand-jury subpoenas from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York, which is believed to be in reference to Brooklyn federal probe.

If the investigation results in criminal charges, it could become the largest prosecution so far involving drug companies alleged to have contributed to the opioid epidemic. The federal prosecutors, this year, began using the federal Controlled Substances Act against opioid makers and distributors, under which the companies are required to monitor commonly abused drugs, including reporting suspicious orders, maintaining compliance programs, and disclosing suspicious pharmacy customers to the government.

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.

Federal data states that around 400,000 people have died in the U.S. from opioid overdose since 1999. Thousands of lawsuits have been brought by cities, counties, and states against major pharmaceutical companies for fuelling the opioid crisis.