DOJ Will Weigh in on Lawsuits Against Opioid Manufacturers

Attorneys general unveil plans to pull legal levers in the fight against opioid addiction, placing much of the blame on those who push addictive painkillers.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it will weigh in on hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed against opioid manufacturers and distributors, seeking reimbursement for costs imposed by the opioid addiction crisis.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who held a press conference Tuesday afternoon with state attorneys general from across the country, said the DOJ will file a statement of interest in a multi-district action regarding the lawsuits filed by states, cities, medical institutions, and others.

Without calling out any defendants by name, Sessions accused the companies of harming public health by employing false and deceptive marketing practices to push their addictive products, which ultimately resulted in a swell of expensive treatment and enforcement needs shouldered by local, state, and federal government agencies.

“We will seek to hold accountable those whose illegality has cost us billions of taxpayer dollars,” Sessions said in a statement, noting that opioid addiction has claimed “hundreds of thousands of precious lives.”

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican whose state has sued a number of drug companies over opioids, said the DOJ’s contribution to the legal challenges is “a game-changer.”

Also during Tuesday’s presentation, Sessions and his guests discussed a number of other efforts underway to fight this problem.

PIL Task Force: Sessions announced the creation of the DOJ Prescription Interdiction and Litigation (PIL) Task Force, which intends to fight the opioid crisis using criminal and civil procedures alike. The initiative aims to bring all of DOJ’s efforts to combat opioids under a single umbrella.

Sessions said the task force will work in close collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services and focus on targeting manufacturers and distributors who contributed to the crisis.

“We will use criminal penalties. We will use civil penalties. We will use whatever laws and tools we have to hold people accountable if they break our laws,” he said.

The task force will also assess existing state and local lawsuits to see where the DOJ might assist in efforts to hold drug-makers accountable, Sessions said.

IMD Exclusion: Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said he was proud to work with DeWine among dozens of state attorneys general who called on Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate Medicaid’s decades-old funding exclusion for institutions for mental disease (IMD).

“Doing away with that will open up treatment beds in every state in this union, and it’s critically important that we do that for those who are in need and those who are desiring that kind of treatment,” Shapiro said.

While declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency last October, Trump himself referred to the so-called IMD exclusion.

“As part of this emergency response,” he said, “we will announce a new policy to overcome a restrictive 1970s-era rule that prevents states from providing care at certain treatment facilities with more than 16 beds for those suffering from drug addiction.”

Details on that policy have not been released.

Citing recent studies, he added that the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. nearly $115 billion last year alone, with future costs expected to rise.

“It is estimated,” Sessions said, “that we use many times more opioids than is medically necessary for a population our size.”