Government Healthcare Policy, Business and Technology

First Major Opioid Trial Begins In Oklahoma

Governing: Barring another last-minute settlement, the eyes of the national news media will focus on the county courthouse here Tuesday for the start of a trial where Johnson and Johnson and a group of affiliated opioid manufacturers are accused of creating a multibillion-dollar public nuisance that has led to thousands of deaths and addictions.

"We've had almost 3,000 overdose deaths in the last three years in Oklahoma," Attorney General Mike Hunter said when he filed the state's lawsuit in 2017. "We need to hold these people accountable. Manufacturers have in a consistent and ... coldblooded fashion marketed these drugs in a way that has misrepresented their tendency to be addictive and the extent to which they can be deadly."

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