Big Apple Sues Big Pharma

A lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court Seeks $500 million from five opioid manufacturers and their subsidiaries, including Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson and Endo International, as well as distributors McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that in recent years more New Yorkers have died from opioid overdoses than car crashes and homicides, and claimed that “big Pharma helped to fuel this epidemic by deceptively peddling these dangerous drugs and hooking millions of Americans in exchange for profit.” Fifteen states and about 300 cities and counties have filed similar suits. Opioids killed more than 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, forty percent of overdoses involved a prescription opioid. The companies deny the allegations.