KOKOMO – Howard County is joining the city of Kokomo and government agencies across the United States in a lawsuit against the country’s three largest drug distributors for their role in a still-strengthening drug crisis.
The Howard County Board of Commissioners voted Monday to approve a letter of engagement that allows the county “to participate in the civil suit against those legally responsible for the wrongful distribution of prescription opiates and damages caused thereby.”
Describing the letter and lawsuit was Howard County Commissioner Tyler Moore, who added the suit is being filed against the distributors “for not reporting to the [Drug Enforcement Administration]. That’s the crux of this.”
Those distributors - AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. – were accused by city officials last month of "dumping millions of dollars' worth of prescription opiates into its community" and as being "responsible for the opioid epidemic."
The three companies, maintaining annual revenues of $400 billion and profits also in the billions of dollars, control more than 80 percent of the market for prescription opioids, according to local officials.
Similarly, city officials said last month they were joining the suit because the "wholesale drug distributors failed in their legal obligation to notify the Drug Enforcement Administration of suspicious orders, even as the number of pills flowing into our country continued to rise."
On Monday, Howard County Commissioner Paul Wyman relayed the county’s motivation to become involved in the lawsuit, which has not yet been filed in federal court.
“The important thing regarding this type of a lawsuit is to understand we will never litigate our way out of this situation that we’re in. That’s certainly not what we’re suggesting by any manner by participating in the lawsuit,” he said.
He added, though, that there appear to be “egregious lapses in performance by these organizations. If that pans out to be true, it has certainly contributed to the epidemic that’s before us.”
Wyman later referenced the major 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, between tobacco companies and 46 states, and the related money received by Howard County “to help us help people quit smoking.”
“If these egregious acts pan out to be true, and these [drug] companies are forced to pay up, Howard County should get its fair share of that portion to be put toward this crisis to help us with the people who need help,” he added.
Moore added the lawsuit, while not a solution to the county’s drug crisis, could stop “one of the minor leaks in the dam.”
Howard County has felt firsthand the impact of the opioid crisis and prescription drug abuse.
In June, John Thomas, a physician assistant charged in conjunction with the Wagoner Medical Clinic scandal, was sentenced to roughly three years of supervised probation and a lifetime forfeiture of his physician assistant license as part of a plea agreement.
The development drew to a quiet close the court saga involving the Wagoner Medical Clinic, even if the destruction left in the pill mill’s wake continues to be felt in Kokomo and surrounding counties on a daily basis.
Officials raided the two Wagoner Medical Clinics in March 2013, arresting several clinic doctors and employees roughly a month later in a case put together by Kokomo police and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officers.
In all, prosecutors filed 95 charges in April 2013 against the Wagoners and their associates.
Prosecutors say more than two dozen people died as a result of the illegal prescribing practices at the facility, including pre-signed prescriptions utilized by physician assistants.
The clinic has in part been blamed by local officials for rising overdose death totals and the ubiquity of opiate addiction.
In a previous interview, Howard County Coroner Steven Seele highlighted the impact that pill mills and prescription drug abuse, and the removal of those options, have had in the local area.
“I just wonder if we had such an abundance of pill usage, and then all of a sudden the pill mills got shut down and the price of pills went up and people were scrambling to get their addiction fed,” he said. “So they turned to heroin when normally these people would not turn to heroin.
“And they got into something they just didn’t know how to use.”
The most obvious example is the eradication of the Wagoner Medical Clinic and, in subsequent months and years, the clinic’s associates. With that came a drying-up of the pill market in Howard County.
This created an environment where addicts had to look elsewhere for a high, meaning inexperienced drug users began substituting heroin for prescription medication.
And it has played a role in continuing to devastate Howard County.
As of Thursday, 38 people in Howard County have died from drug overdoses this year, with one more case pending toxicology — making 2017 the deadliest year for drug overdoses in Howard County.
Twenty-four of the deaths were opiate-related, 13 included heroin, 11 involved Fentanyl and 10 included methamphetamine, according to Seele.