Category Archives: Opioids

US opioid crisis: experts say payouts from drug makers ‘highly questionable’

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Two potential payouts from Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma have provoked varied responses

Efforts to get compensation for the US opioid crisis with two multimillion-dollar drug manufacturer payouts have been met by leading activists and addiction experts with a range of responses from incredulity to cautious optimism.

On Tuesday, the wealthy Sackler family and their embattled drugmaker, Purdue Pharma, makers of two opioids that triggered the crisis, Oxycontin and MSContin, reportedly backed a proposal to resolve all opioid lawsuits against themselves and the company for more than $11bn.

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Opioids addiction rising in India as US drugmakers push painkillers

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As the Indian government loosens its prescription opioid laws after decades of lobbying by palliative care advocates, the cash-fed healthcare system is ripe for misuse

In the crowded waiting room of Dr Sunil Sagar’s clinic, in the working-class neighborhood of Bhagwanpur Khera, a toddler breathes from a nebulizer. The patients sit, motionless, but there is somehow tremendous noise. The clinic is a squat cement building draped in wires, a red cross on the door. Sagar sits behind a desk in a small, open room, as a squad of assistants escort patients to him.

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Johnson & Johnson responsible for fueling opioid crisis in Oklahoma, judge rules

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In landmark case, Oklahoma is first state to sue an opioid manufacturer all the way to trial as judge orders orders company to pay $572m

An Oklahoma judge has found Johnson & Johnson liable in a lawsuit claiming the giant drug maker helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic in the state.

Oklahoma is the first state to sue an opioid manufacturer in court all the way to trial.

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Capitalism gone wrong: how big pharma created America’s opioid carnage

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A web of firms ramped up narcotic painkiller sales, creating the biggest drug epidemic in American history as profits surged

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter laid out his indictment against one of the biggest corporations in America, he made a point of saying that he was not hostile to big business.

“The fact that I am a Republican, a conservative and a believer in capitalism and the marketplace does not require me to turn a blind eye when corporations hurt people,” Hunter told a state court.

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Drug makers flooded US with billions of opioid pills as epidemic surged, data shows

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Statistics are a blow to country’s biggest pharmaceuticals that paid millions of dollars in out of court settlements

Drug makers and distributors flooded the US with more than 75bn opioid pills in the crucial years when the country’s epidemic of painkiller addiction and deaths surged to record levels, according to previously secret data released by an American court.

The publication of the Drug Enforcement Administration statistics is a blow to some of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms that have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in out of court settlements in part to keep sealed evidence that they profiteered from escalating demand for opioids even as public health officials were declaring an epidemic.

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Synthetic opioid use booms worldwide amid Africa ‘crisis’, UN says

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Death in US are still rising due to fentanyl addiction, but report highlights alarming take-up of painkiller tramadol in Africa

Synthetic opioid use is booming around the world, acccording to a United Nations report that showed deaths in the United States from overdoses are still rising and a “crisis” of tramadol use is emerging in parts of Africa.

The estimated number of people using opioids – an umbrella term for drugs ranging from opium and derivatives such as heroin to synthetics like fentanyl and tramadol – in 2017 was 56% higher than in 2016, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in the report published on Wednesday.

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Sackler family want to settle opioids lawsuits, lawyer says

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Owners of Purdue Pharma face more than 2,000 lawsuits by officials who blame prescription opioids for sparking drug crisis

The members of the multi-billionaire Sackler family who own a painkiller manufacturer and are being sued by hundreds of state and local officials as part of the opioids litigation want to settle, a leading lawyer for the family said this week.

The attorney Mary Jo White represents four members of the family that controls Purdue Pharma, the company that developed and marketed the painkiller OxyContin. Purdue, along with other opioid makers, wholesalers and distributors, is facing more than 2,000 lawsuits by state, city and county officials who blame prescription opiates for sparking an unprecedented epidemic of drug abuse.

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Purdue’s opioid settlement set to herald barrage of lawsuits against big pharma

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Oklahoma chooses to settle for $270m over Purdue’s criminal marketing of OxyContin – but more lawsuits are likely to come

Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, thought it best to take the money and run.

Just weeks from the start of a much-anticipated trial against the company at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, Hunter was unnerved when Purdue Pharma began making noises about declaring bankruptcy in the face of mounting lawsuits over its powerful narcotic prescription painkiller, OxyContin.

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‘This is blood money’: Tate shuns Sacklers – and others urged to follow

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Pressure builds on other institutions to disavow Sackler family over OxyContin, powerful painkiller linked to opioid deaths

Earlier this year at the Guggenheim in New York, activists objecting to donations from the Sackler family draped protest banners from the museum’s famous spiraling balconies, dropped flyers down through the atrium and pretended to die all over the floor. A gobsmacked public looked on.

Tate Modern has just escaped a similar fate.

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Nan Goldin threatens London gallery boycott over £1m gift from Sackler fund

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Artist brands planned donation from pharmaceutical family to National Portrait Gallery unethical over OxyContin link

The National Portrait Gallery will be forced to turn down a gift of £1m from members of the multibillionaire Sackler family if it goes ahead with a prestigious new exhibition of the work of US artist Nan Goldin.

The photographer and activist is threatening to boycott the gallery if it accepts the donation from the owners of the American pharmaceutical company that makes the addictive painkiller OxyContin, the Observer has learned.

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Anti-opioid protesters target New York’s Guggenheim over Sackler family link

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Demonstrators call on museum to refuse donations from the owners of OxyContin

US art photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought the Guggenheim Museum in New York to a standstill on Saturday night as thousands of fake prescriptions were dropped into the atrium to protest against the institution’s acceptance of donations from the family who owns the maker of OxyContin – the prescription painkiller at the root of America’s opioids crisis.

Tourists and locals gawped in confusion as Goldin and fellow demonstrators began chanting criticism of the Sackler family, who owns Purdue Pharma. The activists handed out fake pill bottles as sheets of paper fluttered down inside the landmark building.

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Opioid strong enough to sedate elephants on rise in Ohio, coroners warn

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Carfentanil, described as ‘extremely potent’ and often undetectable, involved in multiple overdose deaths

Coroners in two of Ohio’s largest counties have issued drug abuse warnings following the reappearance of an opioid so powerful it’s sometimes used to sedate elephants.

Dr Anahi Ortiz is coroner in Franklin county in central Ohio. She said Friday that the county which calls Columbus home had at least three carfentanil-related overdose deaths in January.

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