A judge has agreed with a request from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office to unseal court documents that reveal specific data on how one opioid manufacturer flooded the state with nearly 900 million dosage units of opioids over a six-year period.
Attorney General Andy Beshear filed a motion in Madison Circuit Court in August to unseal previously redacted information in his complaint against Missouri-based manufacturer Mallinckrodt. A judge entered the order this week.
The information was originally sealed to comply with subpoena procedure employed in the investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration database, which was released to the public this summer following a federal opioid case in Ohio.
“Kentuckians can now see why I have taken aggressive action against Mallinckrodt,” Beshear said. “For 10 years, this company distributed almost 30 percent of all opioids in the commonwealth. It blatantly disregarded red flags, filling large, suspicious orders, and used its sales force to skyrocket addiction and ravage our people for profit.”
Previously redacted information in the complaint, now available after Beshear’s filing, includes:
- From January 2012 to December 2017, Mallinckrodt sold 896,167,221 dosage units of opioids in Kentucky.
- Internal documents demonstrate that Mallinckrodt was aware of suspicious orders in Kentucky but continued to fill orders of opioids for pharmacies. For instance, a Manchester pharmacy dispensed 9,533, 30 mg tablets of oxycodone each month in 2012. Manchester’s population in 2012 was just 1,434 people.
- From April 2010 to May 2014, Mallinckrodt sales representatives visited and called Kentucky prescribers 17,492 times in order to promote its painkiller, Exalgo.
- From 2006 to 2014, Mallinckrodt sold 21% of opioids by gram weight distributed to Kentucky pharmacies and accounted for 29.66% of total opioid orders in the Commonwealth during that time.
- Kentucky’s Medicaid program spent $14,793,690 on Mallinckrodt’s opioids from 2013 to 2016.
Last month, the Attorney General’s Office won another motion to unseal court records that showed how the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical manufacturer Janssen pressed physicians to prescribe its drugs, Duragesic and Nucynta, at higher doses and worked to overcome physicians’ reluctance to prescribe these opioid drugs and they were “not only for cancer patients.”
A Fayette Circuit Court judge entered an order in another case brought by Beshear to unseal court documents in August revealing data about pharmaceutical manufacturer Teva.
The documents showed how Teva persuaded physicians to prescribe its drugs, Actiq and Fentora, to treat chronic pain despite the drugs being approved only for breakthrough pain in cancer patients. Among other opioid companies, Teva sold the majority of opioids in grams in Kentucky from 2006 to 2014.
Kentucky now leads the nation with nine individual opioid lawsuits.
By Ken Howlett, News Director
Contact Ken at ken@k105.com
