Nebraska AG Stands Alone
[Headline from DRJ]
AP News – Nebraska’s AG is lone holdout in pursuing opioid cases:
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson has fought prescription opioid abuse through public education campaigns, worked with lawmakers to tighten prescribing practices and even demanded documents from the maker of OxyContin. He has said the overdose crisis is ravaging families.
What Peterson hasn’t done is pursued a lawsuit seeking to hold any opioid manufacturer, distributor or pharmaceutical company accountable. That leaves him standing alone among state attorneys general.
Every other state has sued, filed administrative charges or promised to sue the companies blamed for the national crisis, which played a role in the deaths of more than 390,000 Americans from 2000 through 2017. Peterson’s decision to stand on the sidelines, at least so far, has frustrated some who want to make sure that Nebraska is in line to receive its fair share of money under any national settlement.
It is governnent’s job to implement good policies to address public problems. In this case, is making someone else pay a good or bad policy?
— DRJ
Isn’t the question answered based on if the pharmas are culpable and if so how you quantify it? Are they selling opioids out the back door? Are they manufacturing with any ratio of black market wholesalers targeted?
harkin (470cbb) — 6/12/2019 @ 12:03 pmIf there are crimes being committed, absolutely.
DRJ (15874d) — 6/12/2019 @ 12:06 pmAll I know after my second total knee replacement-{yesterday] Used properly oxicodone is a must for healing.
mg (8cbc69) — 6/12/2019 @ 12:12 pmIf still admitted, Demerol in a PCA.
Just sayin’
harkin (470cbb) — 6/12/2019 @ 12:47 pmAs deep throat said in watergate follow the money! Mark levines commercial defending phizer for not investigating dementia drug really interesting as mr. sock says.
lany (ba3cde) — 6/12/2019 @ 1:11 pmI am intensely skeptical of this sort of in loco parentis lawsuit, even moreso than I am of class actions. They’ve become, for many state attorneys general, a way to get reliable big headlines that can lead to gubernatorial runs. In some instances (as in many of the asbestos and tobacco lawsuits brought by state AGs), they become troughs for spectacularly large pools of graft (in the billions) which go to benefit the AG’s political lawyer-cronies and campaign contributors; and when they settle, the results tend to have more to do with raw exercise of political power than anything resembling evidence, fact-finding, and justice.
Oftentimes the big companies would rather make an overall deal, which has the effect of blocking or sharply limiting individual claimants without their having any say-so; in theory courts are supposed to consider the “public interest” independently of what the once-adverse/now cooperating litigants are bringing in for judicial approval, but as with class actions, courts do a lousy job in general when trying to act “for the public” at large without an effective advocate, in a genuine adversary process, to present contrary evidence and alternative proposals.
I’m also intensely skeptical of the notion that a company that’s marketing drugs which it concedes, and warns, are habit-forming or addictive is liable when those drugs turn out to be habit-forming and addictive; I think that eliminates individual decision-making and responsibility in a way that is not healthy for society.
Which is to say: Off the top of my head, my reaction is that the Nebraska AG may be right, and all the others wrong.
Beldar (fa637a) — 6/12/2019 @ 1:13 pmmg,
Bless your heart. I know people who have had that (some once, some twice) and they were all glad they did it, but it is hard. Bone surgery is tough. I hope you feel better soon.
DRJ (15874d) — 6/12/2019 @ 3:50 pmGet well soon, mg. During your recovery, I suggest you consider this music as your new ringtone.
Beldar (fa637a) — 6/12/2019 @ 4:26 pmGet well soon, mg.
nk (dbc370) — 6/12/2019 @ 4:45 pmIn this case, it is bad policy. I do not like it. “It” being “Every other state has sued, filed administrative charges or promised to sue the companies blamed for the national crisis, which played a role in the deaths of more than 390,000 Americans from 2000 through 2017.”
Just as I do not like Arms manufacturers being blamed and sued for the current firearm crisis.
“Making someone else pay” ends up meaning you and I who end up paying for the mistakes of drug abusers.
felipe (023cc9) — 6/12/2019 @ 4:55 pmGet well soon, mg!
felipe (023cc9) — 6/12/2019 @ 4:59 pmthanks so much, DRJ, Beldar, nk and felipe. my wife is the rock.
mg (8cbc69) — 6/12/2019 @ 5:20 pm@5. ‘Deep Throat’ never said that; per author Woodward and screenwriter Goldman, it’s not found in the book and can be credited to Goldman’s screenplay.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 6/12/2019 @ 6:40 pmStay tough, mg. You’ll be up and at ’em before you know it.
JVW (54fd0b) — 6/12/2019 @ 6:43 pmI guess we can expect Pfizer, Merck, and J&J to be opening up large offices in Omaha soon.
But seriously, props to the Nebraska AG for declining to chase the ambulances.
JVW (54fd0b) — 6/12/2019 @ 6:46 pmYes it was in Woodward papers along with other omissions lies and false attributions
Narciso (b0b7ad) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:08 pmHA! great video, Beldar, So apropos.
felipe (023cc9) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:12 pmMy father suffered from a horrible inflammatory bone disease from his mid-forties until his death thirty years later.
nk (dbc370) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:24 pmThe motherf***ing government outlawed the only anti-inflammatory medicine that worked for him.
The newer anti-inflammatory garbage with an X in their names gave him two heart attacks and a bleeding ulcer.
Towards the end he was on fentanyl and it only helped marginally.
The only thing I have to say to the grandstanding motherf***ing government lawyers who are f***ing with millions of chronic pain sufferers on a phony-baloney new war-on-drugs crusade is: “Motherf***ers!”
Given that the Nebraska taxpayers are probably paying for more jail cells and court costs, more ambulance rides, and so forth, Nebraska should try to get money from the people responsible for opoid abuse. Unfortunately, the people responsible are the addicts themselves, and good luck getting money out of them.
Kishnevi (82cec7) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:26 pmthanks JVW.
mg (8cbc69) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:34 pmI feel like the 6 cent man, Beldar. But thanks for putting a smile on my face.
mg (8cbc69) — 6/12/2019 @ 7:35 pmGet better, MG! I agree that pain killers are great for handling the curveballs of life. Like Ice cream, women, and video games, pain-killers make life better in mature, moderate hands, much worse in excess.
I think felipe is at least 95% right about this. Most of the time I encounter someone who is abusing these pain killers, they know better. Maybe they shopped around until they found the right doc, maybe they raided the medicine cabinet after a loved one didn’t need their full prescription (we never use more than a fifth of our pain killers), but they knew. Every time we get these things, we get a lot of literature about abuse.
Is Budweiser responsible for DWI? They promoted partying with their beer knowing someone would party and drive home. The actual actor who makes the bad decision rarely has the deepest pockets, and we wind up getting away from the truth.
Dustin (6d7686) — 6/12/2019 @ 8:31 pmThe are issue here is the War On Drugs. It doesn’t stop the use f illegal drugs t such an extent that you’d actually notice. What it DOES do is get between doctor and patient. It also erodes our civil liberties; the spread f no-knock warrants and dynamic-entry raids – and the attendant screwups – all get back to the WOD. I’ve known some junkies, and they were sad, wasted people. But the WOD doesn’t keep them from getting their fix, and so far as I can see it never has.
If the government backed off, would the rate of addiction rise? Possibly. But if the War On Drugs causes even ONE chronic pain sufferer to be unable to get whatever relief opioids might provide, it’s barbaric.
The policy is a bad one, and the larger policy that gives birth to it – the notion that the government can and should regulate drug use – is a worse one.
C. S. P. Schofield (f7316d) — 6/12/2019 @ 8:53 pmappreciate that, Dustin
mg (8cbc69) — 6/12/2019 @ 9:25 pmthanks
If they were using fraudulent marketing or bribing doctors to proscribe, then they should be held liable, otherwise, the user chose to use.
Nic (896fdf) — 6/12/2019 @ 9:35 pmmg, hope you start to feel better soon and you get a great physical therapist.
Nic (896fdf) — 6/12/2019 @ 9:36 pmWhat these suits are saying is that, since they cannot sue the federal government for failing in its job, they are suing companies that are operating legally, because abusable drugs are abused.
Should this suit succeed, I cannot see any make of any drug that can be abused (and there’s a longer list than you might think) continuing in that business.
This probably includes alcohol.
Kevin M (21ca15) — 6/12/2019 @ 10:46 pm@16. Dust for jowl prints:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_the_money
DCSCA (797bc0) — 6/12/2019 @ 11:07 pmThanks Nic. Eleanor just happens to be great. She worked on my left hip and left knee!
mg (8cbc69) — 6/13/2019 @ 3:46 am