Was Johnson & Johnson an Opioid ‘Kingpin’?
Across the United States, lawmakers and politicians are looking at possible ways of tackling the current opioid crisis. The state of Oklahoma has decided to take some matters to court and are pursuing legal claims against world-renowned pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for their part in the manufacturing of morphine and OxyContin.
Oklahoma is claiming that J&J has played a significant role in large swathes of people in the state becoming addicted to opioids as a result of prescriptions for pain relief. J&J created many of the raw plant materials used by companies such as Purdue Pharma to manufacture OxyContin.
The state of Oklahoma claims that J&J “bragged” about their ability to provide highly-addictive levels of morphine
A report by Axios – a leading US-based news and information site – states that it is claimed that J&J ‘bragged’ about their production of raw narcotics in poppy fields in Tasmania, claiming that its raw products “enabled the growth of oxycodone” and the morphine quantity of a different species of poppy was “the highest in the world”.
Oklahoma is also claiming that Johnson & Johnson is responsible for the targeting of children and adults in regards to painkiller prescriptions, including evidence that lobbyists funded by J&J advocated the increased availability to such groups of opioid-based painkillers.
Damningly, it is claimed that one pro-opioid group named as the Pain Care Forum marketed a brochure aimed at senior citizens which falsely state that “opioids are rarely addictive.”
J&J says they “met all laws and regulations” and that all allegations are “baseless and unsubstantiated”
J&J has recently divested its opioid business. Because of this, the state of Oklahoma says that information regarding the supply of morphine by J&J should be made public as it no longer contains ‘trade secrets’. Lawyers acting on behalf of J&J say that moves against them are done with the effort of creating ‘sensationalistic headlines’ and to ‘poison potential jurors’. J&J’s lawyers also state that J&J and their subsidiaries “met all laws and regulations” and that all allegations made against them by the state of Oklahoma are “baseless and unsubstantiated”.
Almost 800 residents of Oklahoma died of drug overdoses in 2017, and around fifty percent of those were in relation to opioid overdoses.
If you have been affected by opioid addiction of any kind and are looking for help, please contact us here at Advanced Rapid Detox. We can be contacted by phone at 800-603-1813 or via our online contact form that’s available on our website.