The Impact of the Truth

There’s truth that opens the door to a better future and there’s truths that stop you in your tracks. In my work, I fairly often come across truths that cause me to stop, close my eyes and just absorb the sensation of this truth washing over me. These aren’t the best truths or pleasant truths but they are moments when what I know and what I read add up suddenly to a new conviction. 

I believe this only happens when you are not naïve about the world, when you are willing to see the ignoble motivations that guide some people’s actions. Then the truths you identify can reveal the backstory to actions you might read about in the headlines. 

This phenomenon occurred yesterday as I read about a West Virginia lawyer who has taken on various pharmaceutical corporations to bring them to task for decimating the state with opioid addiction. If you are not familiar with the entire problem, I will try to summarize the main points quickly. It takes a little background to grasp this truth. 

How We Got Into Such Trouble with Opioid Painkillers

Here’s the path we took. 

1. Pharmaceutical corporations, starting with Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, trained sales reps to tell doctors that they could start prescribing opioid medications for moderate and chronic pain. Previously, doctors avoided prescribing opioids for pain unless need for pain relief outweighed the risk of addiction. 

2. These pharmaceutical companies also hired doctors to deliver seminars and workshops to potential prescribers to send them the same message.

3. Understandably, the number of opioids prescribed soared and kept soaring. Not just OxyContin numbers but all types of addictive painkillers. Hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, meperidine and others. 

4. Doctors were not trained to identify when a patient became addicted to their painkillers. They were also not trained on how to wean a patient off these medications and return them to sobriety. 

So what situation resulted? The addiction of millions of Americans. Many people became addicted to opioids when all they did was take the pills exactly as their doctors ordered. Others found that the prescribed painkillers no longer alleviated their pain so when their doctors would no longer increase their dosages, they increased them on their own. But then they would need more pills to get them through the month so they had to find another doctor and complain of pain and get another prescription.

Still other people reached for pills recreationally, to get high. For some people, one incident of misuse was all it would take for them to know they were hooked. 

Over the last several years, a gathering storm of litigation has been aimed at pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors to hold them responsible for their initial fraudulent marketing. States, counties, cities and hospitals have filed hundreds of lawsuits. 

Not only are millions addicted to pills, but hundreds of thousands have died as a result of these addictions. How many family members have broken hearts that will never heal? 

West Virginia Suffers

Of all the states, West Virginia has suffered the most grievously. In a population of just two million, this small and secluded state loses a thousand residents a year. More people die from opioid overdoses in West Virginia than any other state–far more people. In this state, a lawyer named Paul Farrell is orchestrating lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson, Endo International Plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., all makers of painkillers, plus pill distributors like Cardinal Health Inc., McKesson and AmerisourceBergen Corp. 

In many states, the Attorney General initiates these lawsuits. But in an article on the Bloomberg website, it doesn’t look like West Virginia’s Attorney General wants to get involved in this activity. The Bloomberg article says, “(Farrell) sued the distributors on behalf of several counties in January 2017 after West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, reached settlements totaling $36 million with Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp. The settlements came too quickly and were too small, Farrell says.” (Emphasis added.)

Now check out the next paragraph and see what you think. 

“Morrisey, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals industry, is now running for U.S. Senate as a Republican; his wife, Denise, lobbied for Cardinal for 17 years and represents drug companies.”  

That was the point that washed over me with such intensity. That spoke volumes to me about why West Virginia has struggled so greatly and why pharmaceutical corporations are not being held accountable for the harm done to this state. 

I truly hate to even catch the fragrance of such odious criminality that harms so many people. If you grant for a moment that the information in the Bloomberg article is 100% true, is Morrisey any better than the worst drug dealer on the street? I think not.