As the opioid crisis continues to spread across the nation, Marion County officials are considering suing drug manufacturers to recoup costs.
Marion County ranks second behind Forrest County in opioid use in Mississippi with 182.9 prescriptions per 100 residents, a number that concerns the Board of Supervisors.
Amy J. Quezon, a lawyer with the McHugh-Fuller Law Group in Hattiesburg, said counties are suffering immense expenses for law enforcement, emergency medical costs and jails because of opioid painkillers and addiction.
“They (drug manufacturers) are flooding communities with pills,” Quezon said. “Marion County is off the charts. The opioid crisis has affected every single one of us in some way.”
Quezon represents a consortium of law firms representing counties to try to recover costs of the addictions. Jefferson Davis and Lawrence counties have already signed on.
It’s part of a growing movement to hold drugmakers responsible for the opioid problem, which President Trump has said he’s going to declare a national emergency next week. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has contracted with private attorney John Davidson of Flowood to sue 17 opioid manufacturers on behalf of the state. That case is pending in front of the state Supreme Court over whether it will be heard in Hinds County or Rankin County chancery court.
Meanwhile, many private law firms across the country are preparing similar suits in response to the thousands of overdose deaths each year. Quezon spoke of statistics that describe how the crisis got started.
“They poured enough pills into the state of West Virginia so that in a year, every man, woman and child could have had 433 pills,” she said. “Under the law, both the manufactures and the distributors were supposed to report suspicious orders. If that’s not suspicious – I don’t know what is. I want you to know that zero suspicious orders were reported.”
Some doctors were unethical in the dispersion of pills, while others simply didn’t know the facts about the addiction likelihood, she said.
“You’ve got some doctors that were lied to,” Quezon told the board during the public meeting. “The manufacturers are to blame for this, and I think that they lied to people. The sickest thing they did was that they marketed to poor communities because the poor communities had Medicaid cards. We as taxpayers funded this epidemic, and we made them richer than anyone could have imagined. One company paid their CEO last year $89 million. That was the compensation just for one company’s CEO. These are Fortune 500 companies, the distributors, these are Fortune 25 companies. These are the wealthiest of wealthy corporations and they did it on the backs of poor people.”
“The county is paying the cost of abuse and neglect,” she said. “You are the ones that have to pay for rescues.”
Quezon explained the lawsuit process and that it was at no cost to the taxpayers.
“If you don’t recover, you pay us nothing,” she said.
Quezon said many county boards in several states were already suing drug manufacturers.
“Your board has the absolute right to get rid of a nuisance,” she said. “How are you going to get rid of that nuisance? Additional law enforcement, education and treatment. This community needs help. The manufacturers and distributors are the only ones that caused the problem and they got rich doing it.”
District 4 Supervisor Raymon “Tater” Rowell asked about the role of doctors in the abuse cycle.
“There was misinformation that flooded them,” Quezon said. “They were taught in medical school that these pills were necessary. We’re pouring a lot of pills into Marion County. You are central in this process – it is community driven.”
Board President Calvin Newsom asked about the process and was told the passing of a resolution to sue the manufacturers was what the county needed.
“I have to congratulate you on the work,” he said. “I appreciate that it is county driven.”
The Board took the offer under advisement and Board Attorney Joe Shepard will study draft resolutions for a future meeting. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Marion County Board of Supervisors is set for Nov. 6 at the Board offices.
Opioid prescriptions per 100 people
1. Forrest, 210
2. Marion,182.9
3. Alcorn, 175.7
4. Grenada, 164.7
5. Tishomingo, 160.8
6. George, 158.9
7. Stone, 158.5
8. Adams, 158.2
9. Lauderdale, 157.7
10. Webster, 155
Source: Centers for Disease Control, 2016
