The New York Times reports advice from global consulting firm McKinsey & Company is being made public by Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and New Jersey “as government officials seek to assign blame for the opioid crisis that has strangled large parts of the nation.” During “a civil trial that wrapped up last week,” the states revealed that McKinsey advised Johnson & Johnson “on how to increase opioid sales at a time when abuse of its pain medicine was widespread.” While the firm “is not a defendant, Oklahoma used McKinsey consulting records to help build its case against Johnson & Johnson and a subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, for what the state said was irresponsible marketing of a fentanyl patch called Duragesic.” In addition, “cases in Massachusetts and New Jersey also highlighted McKinsey’s hand in marketing opioids.” In a statement, “McKinsey said it had gotten out of the business of giving advice related to opioids.”
Florida’s opioid crisis: Billions of pills, millions in campaign cash The Tampa Bay (FL) Times reports from Tallahassee, “In a seven-year span that saw an opioid epidemic reach crisis levels, 5,556,553,071 hydrocodone and oxycodone pills flooded into Florida. They poured across the state through shady clinics that became known as ‘pill mills.’ But hundreds of millions streamed through grocery stores and chain pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens, according to newly released data provided by the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Washington Post and analyzed by the Times/Herald.”
Millions of opioid pills flooded Arizona communities during prescription drug boom The Arizona Republic reports that “the prescription drug portion of the opioid crisis in Arizona might be waning as new regulations on prescribing practices take effect.” However, there’s still “a lot of ground to make up,” the article says, as “Drug Enforcement Administration data recently obtained by the Washington Post shows…a shocking number of powerful opioids distributed per resident” in the state.
From the news release of the American Association for Justice.
