As the first jury trial in nationwide opioid litigation gets underway in New York’s Long Island, jurors will be asked to decide whether drugmakers and drug distributors created a public health crisis and should pay for it—possibly as much as $57 billion for the opioid manufacturers alone. Prosecutors say the companies illegally marketed the highly addictive prescription painkillers and ignored warning signs and suspiciously large orders, leading to more than 500,000 overdose deaths over the past two decades. Jurors on Long Island will be familiar with the crisis, as Suffolk County on Long Island was hard hit by drug overdoses. Other opioid lawsuits are taking place in California and West Virginia, part of thousands of cases across the country to gain compensation from companies accused of fueling the epidemic.
Meanwhile, school districts say they have collectively spent at least $127 billion helping students affected by the opioid epidemic, and are pushing in court to receive compensation as well from the opioid industry. Lawyers representing the schools say the figure almost certainly underestimates the true cost of special education services and social-emotional supports for students whose physical, mental, and emotional health was hurt by the crisis.
And finally, an editorial in the Stamford Advocate newspaper in Connecticut calls on state leaders to use the potential windfall from opioid lawsuits for stopping addiction. With opioid overdose deaths in Connecticut soaring from 298 in 2012 to 1,273 last year, the editorial says the money should not be siphoned off for other purposes, as the state does with funds from the $27.5 billion tobacco settlement in 1998. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently signed a “lockbox” bill that guarantees such funds will go exclusively to addiction prevention and treatment.