Some corporations complicit in ongoing opioid crisis

Bill Knight column for 1-17, 18 or 19, 2019

Attention to the shutdown showdown over a down payment to a pricey and ineffective wall at the 1,954-mile U.S. border with Mexico means fewer stories on costly crises in thousands of homes and communities.

One of them is the ongoing opioid epidemic, which claimed 49,068 American lives last year, according to a September study in the journal Science. The United States has about 4 percent of the world’s population but some 27 percent of its drug overdose deaths, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The nation’s drug mortality rate is 22.5 (per 100,000 people), says according to Michael Meit, co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health at the University of Chicago. Illinois’ rate is 20.7 and Illinois counties suffering higher rates are Knox (22.5), Livingston (25.5), Peoria (25.2), Tazewell (24.8) and Woodford (24.1).

“The opioid epidemic is the most important and most serious public-health crisis today,” says the Mayo Clinic.

Overwhelmingly affecting white, rural men 40 years older, according to Science, the opioid epidemic’s extent is starting to dawn on individuals and communities, despite years of news coverage and public discussions.

“People by and large still have no idea how bad things are in their communities,” Meit says.

Along with slowly growing awareness, people are beginning to link opioid consequences with wrongdoing, and more and more it’s seen as largely the responsibility of corporations that make, market and distribute the addictive drugs.

A coalition of labor, faith-based and other groups called Investors for Opioid Accountability (IOA), has formed to use corporate-stockholder voting rights to pressure pharmaceutical companies, which some say are responsible for promoting the widespread use of addictive pills.

The U.S. Justice Department found that Purdue Pharma more than 20 years ago was aware that its OxyContin was widely abused. The corporation continued "in the face of this knowledge" to market OxyContin as less prone to addiction than other prescription opioids, wrote prosecutors, who found that the company knew about "significant" abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug's 1996 introduction and concealed that information. Based on a four-year investigation, prosecutors in 2006 recommended that executives be indicted, but officials in the Bush administration opposed the move, and it was dropped.

Now, IOA is targeting manufacturers and distributors including opioid-makers Depomed, Endo, Insys, Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt, Mylan and Pernix, and opioid distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. With members holding with more than $2.2 trillion in assets – including unions, churches, and government funds such as the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, the Teamsters, and the office of the Illinois State Treasurer, according to IOA co-leader Donna Meyer – the coalition is demanding that boards that run such corporations change management practices to at least avoid harm to their reputations.

“What is clear now more than ever is the need for structural, operational and cultural changes across the drug industry to address the opioid crisis,” commented Ken Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters, “We're proud to be part of a broad coalition of investors whose diverse membership is committed to fighting for greater accountability across the drug supply chain.”

Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs added, “The opioid epidemic is destroying American families. We need drug companies to step up and take action now. If they fail to do so, not only will families across the country continue to lose loved ones, but drug companies will likely face more lawsuits, government regulations, and financial consequences in their stock prices.”