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In an effort to recoup public health care costs incurred by the opioid crisis, Canadian provinces filed a $ 67.4 billion US claim against OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.
The provinces are some of the more than 600,000 plaintiffs listed in the documents filed against Purdue Pharma on November 5 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
OxyContin was introduced about two decades ago, marking what addiction experts recognize as the beginning of the opioid crisis. The drug quickly spread to the streets, leading to a full-blown public health crisis involving various other opioids and eventually a devastating influx of fentanyl, which killed many of the more than 4,500 Canadians who died from drug overdose in 2018 alone. .
British Columbia’s credit is over US $ 9.1 billion, Ontario’s is US $ 26.1 billion and Quebec’s is US $ 15.3 billion.
Reidar Mogerman is the attorney handling the class action cost recovery litigation for British Columbia. He says this situation is comparable to past social actions after the mass public harm was caused by tobacco and asbestos.
“The Canadian number looks big and it’s big because it’s a significant problem. I think if you add in complaints from US entities you get numbers in excess of $ 2 trillion US dollars. It’s really astounding,” Mogerman said.
In the United States, Purdue paid $ 634.5 million about 13 years ago to settle disputes after it was accused of mislabeling OxyContin as less addictive than other pain relievers.
Health Canada has never investigated Purdue.
“It’s a product that we thought was useful and it proved extremely dangerous. The carnage can only be addressed with company-wide tools,” Mogerman said.
A health crisis has arisen throughout society
He explained that as the drug manufacturer was overwhelmed with claims related to the opioid crisis, he moved to apply to US courts for bankruptcy protection, which blocked the legal process.
Mogerman says Purdue continues to sell opioids in Canada and the United States, but how they are used and marketed has become safer.
However, the consequence of the introduction of OxyContin has been a “social health crisis,” he said.
Three years ago, Canadian provinces seemed willing to reduce their Canadian demand by $ 85.5 billion – for everything from emergency medical care to overdose prevention sites and addiction treatment programs – to a share of $ 2 million of the settlement offer.
But outspoken Saskatchewan judges sounded the alarm that the provinces were failing to protect public funds.
Purdue initially offered $ 20 million CDN to settle a Canadian lawsuit centering on the victims of 1,600 members that has been ongoing since 2007.
But in the end the provinces withdrew their support, after the reprimand of the judges.
In 2018, the BC government filed its own lawsuit against more than 40 pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue. That claim states that they knew, or should have known, that opioids were addictive and spilled into the illegal market.
But all claims were frozen after Purdue sought bankruptcy protection in 2019.
Mogerman says the patients’ claims were starting to run counter to provincial interests, so they had to act another way.
He said BC takes this crisis so seriously that billions have been spent trying to solve it.
“The province needed to protect the wider public interest it is trying to pursue,” he said.
“But nobody has a silver bullet. It’s not an easy thing to fix.”
He predicts a showdown will come and drug companies will pay compensation to BC and other provinces or his team will pursue the company and the family that owns it.
“We will pursue cases to the ends of the world if necessary,” he said.
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