The family-friendly health care conglomerate is not generally associated with the opioid epidemic. But Oklahoma will try to prove its role in the drug crisis.
By Lenny Bernstein Lenny Bernstein Reporter covering health and medicine Email Bio Follow May 4 at 8:00 AM Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest health-care conglomerates, nurtures a family-friendly image as it sells Band-Aids and baby shampoo, soaps and skin creams.
The state also contends that Johnson & Johnson targeted children in its opioid marketing — an alleged effort to provide so-called replacement customers — something the company vehemently denies. But John Sparks, Johnson & Johnson’s Oklahoma counsel in the case, said the state cannot show that the company had any connection to opioid overdose deaths in Oklahoma, which reached nearly 400 in 2017, or other harms the state is claiming.
The focus of Johnson & Johnson’s role in opioid development is through two subsidiaries that provide the raw materials for medications. Tasmanian Alkaloids, an Australian company, is the largest producer of thebaine, a narcotic substance derived from poppies. Noramco refines thebaine and other narcotics from poppies into the active ingredient in oxycodone and other opioids for use in drug manufacturing.
Oklahoma maintains that Teva has a long-standing relationship with Purdue to distribute a generic version of OxyContin, a powerful and popular time-release opioid painkiller. Unless there is another settlement or Balkman throws out the case before the May 28 trial date, arguments will center on Oklahoma’s novel use of its “public nuisance” law. Some of the more than 1,500 other jurisdictions around the country that have filed lawsuits against drug companies have made the same claim, alleging that the marketing, sales and distribution of opioids hurt people.
“It has a good deal of merit to it, because our statute on public nuisance is pretty broad,” he said. Oklahoma also alleges that the companies worked together, through front groups and speakers, to increase the size of the market for painkillers.
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