West Virginia Attorney General reached a multistate settlement against a pharmaceutical company over allegations of falsely and aggressively marketing and promoting opioids.
According to a news release, Indivior, a global pharmaceutical company, will pay more than $5.2 million to West Virginia. $1.36 million of the settlement amount will be kept by the state and the remaining amount will be paid to the federal Medicaid programs.
The attorney general said that deceptive marketing of the products claiming that it is safe to use can have dangerous outcomes.
From 2010 to 2015, Indivior promoted the sale and use of Suboxone by encouraging physicians to prescribe the drug to users without a medical prescription. The company purposely promoted the opioid sale, even after knowing that it is unsafe for use.
In September 2012, Indivior submitted a petition to federal regulators that stated discontinuation of Suboxone tablet to prevent generic competitors from entering the market. The petition was fraudulent and the agreement even resolves those allegations.
The first opioid crisis trial started in the federal court on May 3, 2021, where the communities of West Virginia claimed that narcotic painkiller manufacturers are responsible for numerous deaths across the country due to opioids.
West Virginia's Cabell County and its largest city, Huntington are the worst-hit areas due to the opioid epidemic. Cabell County's attorney summoned the principle of "Occam's razor" as it was the simplest and correct explanation for the trial.
The attorney even stated that though the MDL is the largest and most complex litigation in the history of the United States, the simple truth was that the manufacturer distributed the painkiller in huge quantity which resulted in the deaths of 1,100 people in Cabell County in the past decade.
According to a U.S census, the number of residents in the county has reduced from 96,000 a decade earlier to 92,000 in 2019.
The drug distributors, AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and McKesson Corp. are blaming the lawbreakers and regulators for the epidemic.
It is only the second settlement of Medicaid fraud allegations in West Virginia. In 2019, the first settlement of $700 million was announced against Reckitt Benckiser Group.
