UPDATE: City, county governments file suit against opioid makers, companies

CARTHAGE, Mo. — Several Missouri county and municipal governments, including Joplin and Jasper County, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies.

The suit, filed in Missouri's 22nd Circuit Court in St. Louis, alleges multiple instances of misconduct on the part of the defendants with respect to the marketing of OxyContin, a prescription opioid, and the distribution and management of it and other opioids. The city of Joplin and Jasper County joined Jefferson, Cape Girardeau, Christian, Crawford, Greene, Iron, Stone, Taney and Washington counties as plaintiffs in the suit.

In all, 48 drug companies and pharmacies are named as defendants, including Walgreens and CVS, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals. Jack Garvey, a St. Louis attorney representing the governments, said the defendants "flooded" Joplin and Jasper County with prescription opioids in recent years.

"These companies created a bonfire full of toxic chemicals right in Joplin and walked away from it," he said. "And it's spreading noxious fumes and toxic fumes all across the county; they just left and said, 'Hey, it’s your problem.'"

A report released last month by U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said 1.6 billion opioid pills were shipped into Missouri between 2012 and 2017. The lawsuit mentions episodes of alleged mishandling of opioids that were also raised in McCaskill's report. Both cite a Missouri Board of Pharmacy disciplinary action against a Walgreens store at 2001 S. Main St. in Joplin where a pharmacy technician allegedly altered inventory numbers to divert 57,000 pills between February and June 2016.

Garvey said the suit alleges two "levels of liability." First, he says, pharmaceutical companies marketed opioids as safe, nonaddictive medications that could be used to treat chronic pain. The purpose of opioids, he says, is to treat post-surgery pain or pain caused by cancer on a short-term basis.

"They then got aggressive sales staff, they corrupted scientific literature, they marketed aggressively against general practice doctors because there’s the most of them and they have the most access to the public," he said.

Second, Garvey alleges, pharmacies, distributors and others have failed to adequately monitor large shipments of opioid medications coming into concentrated areas. Such entities are legally required to report irregular orders or shipments of opioids, which Garvey said they have not done adequately.

A Walgreens spokesperson declined to comment on the suit, citing a company policy not to discuss pending litigation. Attempts to reach Purdue and CVS for comment were not successful.

Elizabeth DeLuca, senior director of corporate communications for Teva, said the company complies with all federal and state regulations with regard to opioids, is working on non-opioid medications for pain relief and frequently coordinates with health care officials and others to prevent drug abuse.

"Teva is committed to the appropriate use of opioid medicines, and we recognize the critical public health issues impacting communities across the U.S. as a result of illegal drug use as well as the misuse and abuse of opioids that are available legally by prescription," she said.

John Bartosh, Jasper County presiding commissioner, said in a news conference called Thursday to discuss the lawsuit that 11 people died in Jasper County as a result of opioid overdoses between 2013 and 2017, and that the county saw 645 emergency room visits caused by opioid abuse or overdose between 2012 and 2016.

Commission attorney Norman Rouse said those numbers include heroin overdoses, which people who become addicted to opioids sometimes resort to in lieu of prescription drugs.

"The commissioners are committed, really committed, to getting the opioid problem under control," Bartosh said. "And we've joined up with 10 other counties to fight the ones in the chain that distribute the drugs."

The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages for Jasper County, claiming it has wrongfully incurred expenses related to the alleged actions of the defendants. The county is also asking for an award that would compensate it for future expenses related to the "new generation of addicts" Garvey says have been created by the opioid crisis.

"It starts impacting the sheriff's office, starts impacting the jail system, the court system, the prosecutor's office," Rouse said of the financial toll the epidemic can take on the county. "Between the prosecutor's office, the sheriff's office and the juveniles getting involved, I mean those are the three biggest parts of the county's budget."

Beyond money, though, Bartosh said, the end goal is to see opioid abuse curbed as much as possible.

"It's more to get this drug shut down," he said. "They've got to stop that chain of the drugs coming in — the sellers, the doctors that are overselling, that's what we're after."