ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando city leaders approved a plan Monday to sue several pharmaceutical manufacturers for damages from opioid overdoses in federal court.
- Federal lawsuit against multiple companies
- Accuses them of scheming to increase demand for opioids
- Says Orlando has suffered unanticipated costs
- READ: City of Orlando opioid lawsuit (.pdf)
The city is joining hundreds of local governments in Florida and across the country in seeking a financial settlement from Perdue Pharma, Par Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson and Johnson and other companies that make and distribute opioids.
The 300-page lawsuit accuses the manufacturers of a "multi-pronged scheme" to increase demand for opioids through marketing falsehoods, targeting vulnerable populations, and "disregarding their duties to maintain effective controls." It also accuses manufacturers and distributors of knowing about suspicious orders and prescribers and doing little to stop them.
The complaint shows 216 opioid related deaths in Orlando in 2016 alone. The complaint says Orlando had the eighth most hydrocodone overdose deaths in all of Florida's medical examiner districts, tying the larger city of Miami. Exacerbating the problem, the hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through the Orlando area every year.
The complaint says the police and fire departments have dramatically increased staffing needs, and recently increased the amount of naloxone, the opioid reversal drug, available to fire departments.
The city also claims its had to deal with "additional and unanticipated costs" as a result of the opioid epidemic, including increased health care costs, law enforcement and judicial expenditures, increased jail and public works expenditures, increased substance abuse treatment and diversion plan expenditures, and increased emergency medical services and autopsies.
The report cites the Centers for Disease Control, saying over 200,000 of the 350,000 Americans who died from overdoses, from 1999 to 2016, died from opioids prescribed by doctors to treat pain.
Information from reporter Jeff Allen was used in this story.