Drug-tormented West Virginia county sues prescription painkiller distributors
WELCH, W.Va. The West Virginia county with the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate has filed a lawsuit against three national distributors of prescription painkillers and a local doctor, contending they are responsible for the county’s addiction epidemic.
The suit was submitted in state court Friday by the McDowell County Commission, citing federal Drug Enforcement Agency records showing the distributors shipped 423 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia pharmacies and doctors from 2007 through 2012.
Three of the nation’s largest drug wholesalers are named in the suit: McKesson Corp. of San Francisco, Cardinal Health Inc. of Dublin, Ohio, and AmerisourceBergen Drug Co. of Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania. Dr. Harold Cofer Jr. of Bluefield, West Virginia, was also listed as a defendant.
The suit accused the defendants of devastating the local economy and the county’s budget as well as destroying “the lives of many residents” in order to reap millions of dollars in profit. The drug companies had no immediate response.
Attorney Harry Bell of Charleston, who represented the county commission, said the drug distributors “raped” West Virginia by flooding McDowell and other regions with painkillers that were easily prescribed locally to patients, turning them into addicts.
“In over 36 years of litigation, this is one of the most outrageous actions by businesses to profit over the misery and depth of despair destroying families and communities in West Virginia, said Bell.
McDowell County Sheriff Martin West, who accompanied Bell to the courthouse in Welch, said local residents have “suffered actual harm as a result of the conduct of the defendants, motivated by profit and greed, in knowingly flooding McDowell County with opioids beyond what would be necessary.”
McDowell County, a poor and sparsely populated coal region (28,000 residents) in the southernmost stretch of West Virginia, has been hit hard by the opioid addiction crisis sweeping the United States. Unemployment and home mortgage foreclosures remain far above the national averages.
The DEA reported the drug company defendants distributed more than 12 million opioids to the county over six years, contributing to its dubious status as the leading county in the nation for overdose deaths per capita caused by opioids, heroin and other chemical substances.
Health officials in West Virginia, the leading drug overdose death state, report overdoses due to prescription painkillers have been declining in recent years as cheaper heroin is now fueling the addiction epidemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention latest report said overdose deaths in West Virginia occur at the rate of about 34 per 100,000 residents. The rate in McDowell County is even higher. The national average is 13 deaths per 100,000 people.
The Bluefield, W. Va., Daily Telegraph contributed to this report.
Two thirds of women in the U.S. over the age of 60 report having some hearing loss.
Senior author Gary Curhan, a Harvard Medical School professor and physician in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, says:
"Although the magnitude of higher risk of hearing loss with analgesic use was modest, given how commonly these medications are used, even a small increase in risk could have important health implications."
In the U.S., the use of analgesics such as aspirin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is significant and more widespread than 2 decades ago.
In 2010, around 43 million U.S. adults (19 percent) took aspirin regularly, and more than 29 million (12.1 percent) were regular users of NSAIDs. These numbers are considerably higher, at 57 and 41 percent, respectively, than they were in 2005.
As many as two thirds of women in the U.S. over the age of 60 report some degree of hearing loss. Having previously reported a link between analgesic use and an increased risk of hearing loss in men, the researchers decided to look at women and focus on duration of painkiller use.
Findings support a growing body of evidence
For their new analysis, the researchers used data on 55,850 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study, one of the largest and longest running investigations into the health of U.S. women.
Fast facts about hearing loss
They analyzed links between the women's self-reported hearing loss and their use of ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and aspirin.- In the U.S., an estimated 37.5 million adults (15 percent) report some trouble hearing
- Nearly a quarter of those aged 65-74 and half of those aged 75 and older have disabling hearing loss
- Men are more likely than women to report having hearing loss.
The results showed that prolonged use (lasting 6 years or more) of ibuprofen and acetaminophen was linked to a slightly higher relative risk of hearing loss, at 10 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in the women.
The higher risk was relative to women who did not use the analgesics for more than a year.
However, no such link was found for usual-dose aspirin use. The researchers note that hearing loss is a known side effect of high-dose aspirin use, but such dosages have become much less common in the last 2 decades.
The findings support a growing body of evidence linking the use of NSAIDs or acetaminophen with hearing loss, although the underlying biological explanation is not known.
Prof. Curhan says that, should the link be causal, then this would mean that about 16.2 percent of hearing loss occurring in the women that they studied could be due to their use of ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
He and his colleagues urge caution in using their findings; the study was confined to a cohort of mainly white, older women. They say that studies of larger groups including other populations are needed in order to properly understand the link between painkiller use and hearing loss.
"Hearing loss is extremely common in the U.S. and can have a profound impact on quality of life. Finding modifiable risk factors could help us identify ways to lower risk before hearing loss begins and slow progression in those with hearing loss."Discover how ibuprofen may reduce smokers' risk of death from lung cancer.
Prof. Gary Curhan
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