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What are some of the drugs that have been the subject of lawsuits?
What are some of the drugs that have been the subject of lawsuits?
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you know one of the drugs pharmaceutical
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drugs that has been
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the subject of a lot of attention in the
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media recently are opioids opioids are
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pain killers made from opium that’s why
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they call them opioids and so
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the manufacturers of these drugs have
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flooded them onto the market
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they were initially designed
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for the kind of
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excruciating pain
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that
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a cancer patient sometimes experiences
00:38
particularly a terminal cancer patient
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they were really reserved for those
00:43
kinds of
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very limited circumstances
00:49
but the pharmaceutical manufacturers saw
00:51
a larger market
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and so they started marketing them to
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pregnant women who had lower back pain
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from carrying their babies
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or young mothers who were carrying
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toddlers or people who were recovering
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from
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knee surgery in fact i remember
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that i had knee surgery and i was
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prescribed
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an opioid
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i tried taking it one time and i
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realized it just made me feel really odd
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so i stopped
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but what happened
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is that people who didn’t stop became
01:29
very addicted very quickly and that was
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despite representations by the
01:34
pharmaceutical manufacturers that it
01:36
wasn’t addictive
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one in particular uh called purdue
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pharma made the drug oxycontin and their
01:46
claim was that because it was time
01:49
released it wouldn’t be addictive well
01:52
that was completely false
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not only was it false they knew it was
01:57
false
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and between purdue pharma and johnson
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and johnson
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they have flooded the country with these
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drugs and the distributors like mckesson
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and so and cardinal some of the others
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have really been complicit
02:14
in
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just ignoring that the amounts they’re
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distributing to communities
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far exceeded what any community could
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possibly legitimately need
02:25
doctors
02:27
were running what they call pill mills
02:29
who were making
02:31
hundreds of thousands if not millions of
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dollars hand over fist by
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prescribing these drugs and filling the
02:40
prescriptions and then submitting it to
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insurance and all the different layers
02:46
of the health care system
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were really implicated in this for that
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reason we were hired by travis county to
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represent them in the national opioid
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litigation
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because of the costs that the county has
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incurred in trying to treat people every
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time a paramedic goes out to an opioid
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overdose and they have to use narcan
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well that costs the county money and
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that means it costs taxpayers money and
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that amounts to millions of dollars just
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to
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the county where uh
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where austin texas is travis county but
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there are hundreds thousands of
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municipalities around the country
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experiences experiencing the same kinds
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of costs
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and so that litigation has really
03:33
produced
03:35
quite a
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a
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significant
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reaction
03:42
there are
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thousands of cases pending in states and
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in federal courts around the country and
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the defendants are trying to negotiate
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resolutions it was just last week uh a
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27 billion dollar uh
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settlement agreement hammered out
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in principle with johnson johnson
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whether that ultimately
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solves the problem or not remains to be
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seen
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similarly
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texas recently negotiated a 270 million
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dollar settlement with some of the
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manufacturers and the distributors are
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expected to uh also negotiate a separate
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agreement that will add to that the hope
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is that money can then be used
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to
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ameliorate the problem
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to abate the the problem provide
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treatment to people because it’s not
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just addiction addiction leads to
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homelessness
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addiction and homelessness lead to crime
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or
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domestic violence
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another form of crime it’s just a
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cascading event that creates
04:51
systemic problems in our communities and
04:54
we have to deal with it
Austin, TX personal injury attorney Scott Hendler talks about some of the drugs that have been the subject of pharmaceutical lawsuits.
