Opioid epidemic is a fight Florida can't afford to lose | Opinion

I am an attorney who has practiced law in Sarasota for more than 40 years.

 

During my legal career, I've had the privilege of being in the forefront of one of the most consequential legal battles of our time: the fight against the pharmaceutical giants whose deceptive and criminal practices ignited the opioid epidemic.

 

Since 2017, I have been involved in high-stakes litigation on behalf of the cities of Sarasota and Palmetto, Lee Health Systems and others in cases targeting pharmaceutical giants like Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Endo International, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Mallinckrodt PLC.

 

Before the opioid crisis, the average number of overdose deaths in America was 10,00 per year. However, that figure skyrocketed to more than 100,000 per year during the peak of the crisis.

Even now more than 70,000 Americans lose their lives to overdoses every year.

 

But we are finally seeing progress: thanks to accountability efforts across the country, opioid-related deaths have declined by nearly 24% over the past two years.

Yet we still have a long way to go.

 

 

Greed led to misery, deaths

 

So how did we in the United States get to this tragic point?

 

In a word, it's greed.

 

Prior to the 1980s and 1990s, it was a widely accepted medical practice to treat opioids with extreme caution. Doctors understood that the risk of addiction with long-term use was high and prescriptions were limited to immediate post-injury or surgical pain – or for palliative care at the end of life.

 

But then a well-known physician and academic wrote a letter related to a study he conducted in 1986. Basing his conclusions on results from merely 38 patients, the physician claimed opioids could be used safely as a long-term solution for treating chronic moderate to severe pain.

 

The study clearly lacked proper scientific processes – yet its conclusions were presented as groundbreaking truth.

 

In 2010, the physician declared that opioids were safe because "if a person does not have a personal history of substance abuse or a family history of substance abuse – and does not have a major psychiatric disorder – most doctors can feel assured that person is not going to become addicted."

 

It was a blatant example of ill-willed misinformation.

 

These misleading results became the foundation of a false narrative – one that Big Pharma used to reshape public perception and policy.

 

Working directly with companies like Purdue Pharma, the physician's findings helped create deceptive marketing materials that drove billions in sales while ignoring the devastating consequences.

Purdue and the Sackler family that owns Purdue, are widely recognized as the catalyst for this crisis.

 

In 1996, Purdue launched and heavily marketed the opioid OxyContin, which it billed as a long-term answer to chronic pain. Over the next five years, the firm hosted numerous conferences in high-end resorts across the country for thousands of physicians, pharmacists and nurses – all of whom were recruited and trained to promote the use of its new product.

 

If the company could just convince enough physicians to prescribe OxyContin, it would make billions.

 

And it did: Purdue’s revenue grew from $48 million in 1996 to more than $3 billion annually by 2009.

 

From 1996 through its bankruptcy filing in 2019, Purdue generated $35 billion in revenue from OxyContin with the Sackler family withdrawing $10 billion to $12 billion in profits during that same period – though it must be noted that nearly half of that amount went toward tax payments. 

 

Along the way, the lie that opioids are a safe, long-term option for pain management deceived doctors, patients and regulators alike. It opened the floodgates for mass prescribing and it created an epidemic of dependency that continues to ravage our communities.

 

 

The rise of pill mills

 

On the heels of that successful and deceptive campaign, “pill mills” began popping up all over the United States.

 

These pill mills were so-called "clinics" where doctors and pharmacists could prescribe opioids with little supervision. The most extreme example was in Kermit, West Virginia – a town with a population of less than 400 – where a single pharmacy distributed more than 9 million pills in two years and more than 20 million pills in a decade.

 

All of this was done so that a handful of corporations could make billions with no concern for its impact on our community. This greed-driven recklessness still affects our communities today.

America now faces a new, even-deadlier wave: the rise of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid imported by the ton to feed the country’s manufactured demand.

 

What began in cold-blooded boardrooms and laboratories has evolved into an atmosphere of desperation in America's communities, and it has consumed lives faster than many of our towns and cities can recover.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 806,000 total opioid related deaths occurred from 1999 to 2023. This has paved the way for the new synthetic opioid epidemic that continues to plague our communities.

 

In 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three federal felonies including conspiring to defraud the United States, violating anti-kickback laws and rushing FDA approval of its product.

 

The company admitted to bribing doctors and misleading the DEA to boost prescriptions.

 

Those criminal admissions are what led to the civil settlements that followed.

 

 

Accountability must continue

 

Since 2007, U.S. pharmaceutical companies have paid more than $57 billion in criminal fines and civil settlements for misleading opioid-related marketing.

 

These cases, some even invoking charges typically reserved for organized crime, mark the largest example of corporate accountability in U.S. history.

 

In Florida, we have also seen progress firsthand.

 

We have succeeded in legal cases that have held pharmaceutical companies accountable.

 

These efforts have helped direct settlement funds to flow toward prevention, treatment and recovery.

 

In the process, we have shown that justice can save lives.

 

But the work to save more Floridians from the grip of opioids – and from the greed that has enabled opioids to become so deadly – must go on.

 

Accountability is not just about punishment; it is the first step toward healing.

 

 

William E. Robertson Jr. is a fifth-generation attorney who has been practicing in Sarasota for more than 40 years.