Closing arguments held in West Virginia lawsuit over opioids

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Three major U.S. drug distributors should be held responsible for sending a “tsunami" of prescription pain pills that caused a health crisis in one corner of West Virginia, an attorney for local governments said in closing arguments Tuesday in a landmark federal lawsuit.

Distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. distributed 81 million pills into Cabell County and the city of Huntington over eight years.

The lawsuit by the city and the county accused the companies of creating a “public nuisance” with the onslaught and ignoring the signs that the community of about 100,000 people along the Ohio River was being ravaged by addiction.

The plaintiffs are seeking more than $2.5 billion that would go toward abatement efforts.

"I don’t know of anywhere else in the country that can show this tsunami of pills,” Cabell County attorney Paul Farrell said.

The companies, in turn, say poor communication and pill quotas set by federal agents were to blame, along with a rise in prescriptions written by doctors.

Farrell tried to show that the defendants’ conduct was unreasonable, reckless and disregarded the public's health and safety.

“The defendants saw everything, they overlooked a great deal and they corrected very little,” Farrell said. “The massive volume of prescription opioids distributed by the defendants demonstrates a failure to maintain effective control."

Farrell referred to testimony from Dr. Rahul Gupta, West Virginia's former health officer and now President Joe Biden's pick as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2016, Gupta conducted contact tracing of all 830 drug overdoses in the state and found that a significant percentage of those who died had opioids in their system but did...