Marshall County is joining other communities across the commonwealth in action against an opioid epidemic reaching crisis levels.
Marshall County commissioners approved a resolution authorizing Judge-Executive Kevin Neal to approve legal services and execute litigaton through Levin, Papanantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty and Proctor P.A. – a law firm based in Pensecola, Fla. – in recouping costs incurred while battling the opioid epidemic from major drug distributors alleged to have contributed to the rising crisis.
Jeff Gaddy, associate attorney with Levin, Papanantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty and Proctor P.A., told commissioners his firm sought to represent county governmental agencies in obtaining funds lost through the additional strain of dealing with prescription drug abuse in litigation with large pharnaceutical distributors.
The goal, he said was to not only win back those funds, but to secure funding for initiatives focused on stopping the problem before it starts, as well as addiction recovery. Among those initiatives would include educational programs so that children understand prescription drugs can be just as dangerous as illegal street drugs, in addition to protection for law enforcement.
“We allege that these companies have been complicit in creating a public nuisance,” Gaddy said. “A public health crisis that has adversely affected virtually every county within Kentucky. And what we’re going to ask these companies to do is pay the amount that it costs to put all the counties, including Marshall County, back in the position that they were in before the flood of pills began to happen into the area.”
And it is a problem in the county and surrounding areas, Marshall County Sheriff Kevin Byars said.
“If you don’t think that’s a problem here in Marshall County, you are badly mistaken,” Byars said. “It’s here. It’s not on the levels up in Jefferson (County) and northern Kentucky, it’s here though. We deal with it every day. Every single day.”
Gaddy attributed much of that to major distributors, which would be the primary lawsuit targets. Gaddy said distributors had made no attempt to track or report suspicious purchases by pharmacies – be they brick and mortar or online – to the DEA as federal and state regulations required. Distributors are required to, upon suspicious circumstances – which Gaddy said could be dictated by a change in frequency or size of an order or deviation from normal pattern – to pull the order from the truck and either launch an investigation or alert the DEA.
Those controls were never implemented in many cases, conduct to which Gaddy said companies had admitted to the DEA. Gaddy said the issue first came to light when the attorney general of West Virginia filed a lawsuit against major pharmaceutical distributors, obtaining the confidential ARCOS database – a breakdown of every order of opioids ever filled by any distributor. That database revealed that in a five-year period in West Virginia, distributors issued more than 780 million pills into the state. The population of West Virginia is just 1.8 million residents.
The problem has since grown to epic proportions, with Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia now identified as the epicenter of the opiate abuse in the U.S.
According to Centers for Disease Control data, overdose death rates increased 21 percent in Kentucky from 2014 to 2015, reaching about 29.9 deaths per 100,000 due to drug overdose in the state. Some 25 percent more of those deaths involved opioids. In West Virginia the increase in that time frame was somewhat smaller, at 16.9 percent; but the numbers were markedly higher, with 41.5 deaths per 100,000 attributed to drug overdose.
CDC data show that 1,273 Kentucky residents died of drug overdose in 2015; 644 of those deaths were the result of either prescription or illicit opioids. Nationwide in 2015, some 52,404 citizens died from drug overdose; 33,000 of those deaths resulted from opioids. About half of opioid deaths were attributed to prescription drugs.
Those numbers – particularly in northern Kentucky, southern Ohio and southern West Virginia – have continued to rise, to a point where Neal, having seen presentations at the Kentucky Association of Counties convention and the Kentucky Judge-Executive’s convention on the effects, called it “staggering.”
“It was unreal,” Neal said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“When you’ve got ambulances carrying cases of Narcan on their trucks – not one or two doses – cases of it, that’s what they’re experiencing up that way,” Byars added. “And it’s slowly making it’s way down here.”
Neal said he supported holding those drug wholesale distribution companies accountable.
… I support (litigation), because I think we need to get out in front of it. That’s my position. I know the team that’s prepared … what you’re bringing to the table is far greater than what we can do in a small community here. So, I get it, and I know that other communities are jumping on board in supporting this. I think even the Attorney General’s office was looking at it. I think at the local level we know what our problems are; with our leaders here, we don’t want to wait until that epicenter expands and we’re a part of it.”
Gaddy said the firm was one of four in the state partnering to take on the effort. That team would front all litigation costs and would collect no money from the county should that litigation yield no award. The firm would collect 30 percent pf the gross total upon a county win in the lawsuit, Gaddy said. The fiscal court ultimately would have control over pursuing action and settlement. Lawsuits would not target local doctors or pharmacies, Gaddy said, only those major distributors. Gaddy said there were about 800 drug distributors in the U.S., three of which control 85 percent of the market: McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health. Combined revenues for those companies in the U.S. totaled more than $378.4 billion in 2015.
The team, as of Wednesday, representated seven counties in West Virginia, 15 in southern Ohio and 25 in Kentucky, with another 10 in Kentucky pending votes of commitment in their own fiscal courts.
Lawsuits could be filed in the matter in the next month.
View the full opioid litigation information here.