MORGANTOWN — Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has filed two more lawsuits against opioid makers in Boone County Circuit Court.
One suit involves Endo Health Solutions and its subsidiaries Endo Pharmaceuticals and Par Pharmaceuticals, referred to collectively as Endo in the suit. The other involves Mallinckrodt and its subsidiary SpecGx.
The three ongoing suits were filed against Purdue, Teva and Johnson & Johnson, and their various subsidiaries.
“We must hold everyone in the pharmaceutical supply channel accountable,” Morrisey said in a release announcing the suits. “We cannot let bad actors go unpunished. These alleged actions have caused widespread harm to our state and its citizens. We will not tolerate these practices, nor will we stand idly by as senseless death takes the lives of far too many West Virginians.”
The Endo suit offers some brief history of its opioid production and the problems that arose. It sold Percodan – oxycodone and aspirin – starting in 1950; Numorphan – oxymorphone – starting in 1966; and Perocet – oxycodone and acetaminophen – in 1976. In each case, abuse arose almost immediately.
Numorphan, nicknamed “blues” were cooked and injected to produce a more pleasurable high than heroin and were taken off the market in 1971.
But when Purdue saw success with its OxyContin, Endo decided to get back on the bandwagon in 1996 and brought back Numorphan under the new name Opana ER, approved by the FDA in 2006 and reformulated in 2012.
“But Endo knew that re-branding its old, widely abused oxymorphone formula would not be enough — Endo had to help change the narrative about opioids in general if it was to maintain a leadership role in the opioid analgesic market,” the suit says. “Dramatic growth in sales and revenue would come only from the widespread, long-term use of opioids for common and chronic pain conditions like back pain, arthritis, and headaches.”
The suit goes into extensive detail about Endo’s marketing efforts, much of it familiar from other suits: the use of front organizations and key opinion leaders to promote opioids as a safe weapon against chronic pain; and the deliberate effort to underplay addiction and characterize tolerance and “pseudoaddiction” as the need for more medicine.
The suit also alleges Endo knew that both of its versions of Opana ER were also crushable and injectable or snortable, but despite FDA warnings marketed them as abuse-deterrent. It marketed its 2012 version as containing crush-resistant INTAC Technology.
The Mallinckrodt suit, at 29 pages, is more succinct than the 62-page Endo suit.
Mallinckrodt and SpecGxat one time made and marketed brand-name opioids Exalgo and Xartemis XR. It makes and markets Roxicodone along with generic versions of methadone, morphine sulfate, fentanyl, Percoset, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Opana and other opioids. The suit says Mallinckrodt and SpecGX are the nation’s largest opioid suppliers and among the top 10 generic manufacturers.
Again, much is familiar. It uniquely notes that the companies launched a campaign to mischaracterize addiction risks under the trademarked CARES Alliance, described as a “coalition of national patient safety, provider and drug diversion organizations that are focused on reducing opioid pain medication abuse and increasing prescribing habits.”
CARES Alliance promoted its message through a book, “Defeat Chronic Pain Now!” Its author received more than $600,000 from various opioid makers during the period 2012-2017.
Internal memos show sales staff were taught a rap song called “Propah Dose” to drum the marketing message into their heads (but not to be shared outside): “So when you start at the middle/Or you start at the top/Or you start at a little/Make sure you just don’t stop. …”
As with the previous suits, Morrisey filed these in state court under state law charges, and expressly avoid federal charges, in order to keep them from getting blended into the federal multidistrict litigation in Ohio involving thousands of municipalities and counties (including Granville and other West Virginia towns). Both suits bring counts of violation of the state Consumer Credit and protection Act and common law public nuisance.
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