The deal, agreed to by Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family members who own the company and lawyers representing state and local governments and thousands of victims of the opioid crisis, replaces a previous settlement dealthat was rejected last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the new one, the Sacklers agreed to pay up to $6.5 billion and give up ownership of the company, which would pay nearly $900 million. The maximum contribution from family members is $500 million more than the previous deal.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-sackler-settlement-opioid-lawsuits-ea6c89aa9cafc8fdd18fabfad503eeea

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Three major companies reached an agreement to pay over $12 billion to settle a host of litigation related to the distribution of opioids, Bloomberg Law first reported Wednesday.

The suit agreement is intended to encapsulate lawsuits brought by various state and local governments — if the governmental bodies themselves agree to it.

“We are pleased to resolve these longstanding claims and putting them behind us is in the best interest of all parties, as well as our customers, colleagues and shareholders,” said Thomas Moriarty, chief policy officer and general counsel at CVS Health said in a statement.

The suit was filed by six attorneys generals and contends that pharmacies did not pay enough heed to opioid prescription issues.

This is one of several legal battles related to the opioid crisis. In February, distributors such as Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $25 billion for contributing to the epidemic.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/cvs-walgreens-settle-opioid-lawsuits-for-10-billion/438366

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For the Cataldo Ambulance Service crews outside Boston on the front lines of the U.S. opioid epidemic, the flood of overdose calls is a grim daily reality, despite expanded access to overdose reversal drugs.

“When I started, this was a rare thing. You did one or two here and there. Now, we do quite a few,” said Dave Franklin, 44, a supervisor at the private service that contracts with cities who has worked in the field for more than 20 years.

In Massachusetts, EMS opioid overdose calls hit 20,978 in 2016, up from 8,389 in 2013, according to a state report.

Amid wider use by bystanders and police of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdose symptoms, state figures showed a small drop in opioid deaths in the first nine months of 2017 compared with 2016. But Franklin does not yet see a turning point.

“It’s not going away anytime soon. People are still dying regularly,” he said.

In the United States, deaths from drug overdoses have surpassed deaths by firearms and motor vehicle crashes, according to a 2017 Drug Enforcement Administration report.

President Donald Trump has declared a public health emergency over opioid abuse, promising to increase treatment but initially dedicating no money for it.

Opioids, primarily prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetic drugs like fentanyl, a pain medicine 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, are fueling the crisis. Opioid-related overdoses kill 91 people in the United States each day, the Drug Enforcement Administration said.

On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control reported, based on the latest available figures, that the U.S. rate of drug overdose deaths in 2016 grew 21 percent from the prior year.

“It’s hard to watch, and it’s devastating,” said Domenic Corey, 27, who has seen the evidence up close working as a Cataldo paramedic.

Mornings before starting his shift, another Cataldo paramedic, Andrew Simpson, grabs his stethoscope, intravenous supplies, scissors and pen light.

At the ambulance, he checks to make sure there is enough naloxone. They carry more than double the amount they once did because stronger opioids mean that multiple doses of naloxone are often required for someone who is barely breathing.

Simpson, 34, works at least two 24-hour shifts a week in a high-turnover job that can be stressful and where pay starts at $14 an hour. Just touching Fentanyl can send an EMS worker into overdose.

Simpson’s radio crackles with calls. Difficulty breathing. Person down. Unresponsive. Overdose. They turn on the lights and roll. From experience, they know it might be a man who overdosed into unconsciousness while driving, a teen or elderly user passed out in a park or an already stiffened corpse in a hotel room strewn with needles and powder.

On arrival, they spray naloxone up the nose or inject it into the user, pump oxygen into lungs and wait. Some respond gulping for air or vomiting and confused.

“Why are you in my house? What’s going on?” Simpson recalled as a common question from recipients of his aid. Some people are grateful and repentant, crying, shaking hands and promising to get treatment. Others deny they took drugs at all.

The calls often come in waves when fentanyl too potent for users hits the streets. Time of day matters, too.

“If it’s in the afternoon, there’s a much better chance they are still alive,” he said. “If we get the call at 7 a.m., they probably shot up the night before.”

The paramedics say they often see families torn apart in front of their eyes or bereaved parents.

“You see the parents, they’re crushed; just the look of defeat, you know? They lost the most important person in the world to them. I can’t even imagine. But you see it over and over again,” Corey said.

The cost of naloxone has risen with demand, eating into the service’s budgets, Franklin said. But they are also using their steady overdose runs to help some cities map drug hotspots and for police to visit users to urge them into treatment.

“In the back of the ambulance, you talk to them and hope they get treatment,” Simpson said, explaining that most agree they need to get help. “But then at times I’ll see the same person three months down the line and they have overdosed.”

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Mr Trump announced a plan to target the abuse of opioids, which kill more than 140 Americans each day.

The president has previously promised to declare a national emergency, which would have triggered federal funding to help states combat the drug scourge.

The move instead redirects grant money to be used in dealing with the crisis.

• Five ways to tackle the US drug epidemic

Mr Trump said on Thursday at the White House: “More people are dying from drug overdoses today than from gun homicides and motor vehicles combined.

“These overdoses are driven by a massive increase in addiction to prescription painkillers, heroin and other opioids.”

He added: “The United States is by far the largest consumer of these drugs using more opioid pills per person than any other country by far in the world.”

Mr Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing his acting health secretary to declare a nationwide public health emergency and ordering all federal agencies to take measures to reduce the number of opioid deaths, according to senior White House officials.

The order will also ease some regulations to allow states more latitude in how they use federal funds to tackle the problem.

But the White House plans to fund the effort through the Public Health Emergency Fund, which reportedly only contains $57,000 (£43,000).

The Trump administration will then work with Congress to approve additional funding in a year-end spending package, senior officials said.

Other elements of the directive include:

• Allow patients further access to “telemedicine” so they can receive prescriptions without seeing a doctor
• Make grants available to those who have had trouble finding work due to addiction
• The Department of Health and Human Services will hire more people to address the crisis, particularly in rural areas
• Allows states to shift federal funds from HIV treatments to opioids, since the two are linked as drug users often share infected needles

Proponents suggest Mr Trump’s announcement is a critical step in raising awareness about the nationwide epidemic, while some critics argue the move does not go far enough.

“The lack of resources is concerning to us since the opioid epidemic presenting lots of challenges for states’ budgets,” Michael Fraser, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told Politico.

“My hope is people will realise with no new money the ball is going to be in Congress’s court,” he added.

Senator Bernie Sanders later tweeted that while Mr Trump was “right that the opioid crisis is a national emergency”, Friday’s announcement was “nothing more than an empty promise”.

“Millions depend on Medicaid [healthcare funding] for opioid treatment. Trump’s solution is to cut Medicaid by $1 trillion. That is a disgrace,” wrote the Vermont senator.

• The 100 words that triggered the opioid crisis
• Morgue services boom in US opioid crisis

Taking the first step

Rajini Vaidyanathan, BBC News, Washington

Addiction to painkillers and heroin has blighted so many communities across the US – both urban and rural.

As I travelled the country reporting on last year’s election, I remember the hairdresser in Arkansas whose ex-husband died from medicines he’d been given for his bad back, the family in New Hampshire who’d lost a teenage daughter to an overdose and heard stories of doctors who’d become hooked on the very pills they’d prescribed.

President Trump has stopped short of declaring this crisis a national emergency, despite earlier indications he would.

Instead his public health emergency is more of a short-term measure which doesn’t allocate as much funding. Recovering addicts and charities I’ve talked to say more investment in round-the-clock rehab and treatment is what is needed to make a difference.

But while today’s announcement is welcome, many will now be looking to Congress to take more action and secure more money to deal with this crisis.

Since 1999, the number of deaths involving opioids have quadrupled, reaching 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to the Presidential Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, citing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC first declared opioids, a class of pain medications as well as some street drugs, to be an “epidemic” in 2011.

Mr Trump first announced his intention to declare opioid abuse a “national emergency” in August.

“The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now: It is an emergency. It’s a national emergency,” he said at the time.

Experts had urged Mr Trump to use his presidential power under the Stafford Act to declare a national emergency, which would have given states access to money from the federal Disaster Relief Fund.

States would have had immediate access to funding, much like they would after a natural disaster.

But senior officials told reporters that declaring that sort of emergency was not a good fit for an ongoing crisis.

The announcement comes after Mr Trump’s pick for drug czar withdrew his nomination following a report that he helped neuter government attempts to tackle the opioid crisis.

• Controversial Trump drug czar pick withdraws

Pennsylvania congressman Tom Marino pushed a bill that reportedly stripped a federal agency of the ability to freeze suspicious painkiller shipments.

Health Secretary Tom Price also resigned last month after it was revealed he was using expensive private planes for official business.

As a candidate, Mr Trump frequently pledged to tackle the drug crisis, and often campaigned in the hardest-hit states.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41756705

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