West Virginia: Judge Clears Distributors of Blame for Opioid Crisis

SEP 20 2022·Updated AUG 4 2025

Story

Image credit: AP [via The Wall Street Journal]

The Facts

On Mon., almost a year after closing arguments, a West Virginia federal judge ruled in favor of three main US drug distributors in an opioid lawsuit, which claimed that they had created a health crisis.
NBC
Both the city of Huntington and Cabell County, which were hotspots in the opioid epidemic, had demanded over $2.5B to fund a 15-year mitigation plan to recover from the health crisis.
Al Jazeera
The fatal overdose rate in Cabell County, jumping from 16.6 per 100K in 2001 to 213.9 per 100K in 2017, led to chaos made public by the Oscar-nominated documentary Heroin(e).
nytimes
However, district judge David Faber said that AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson had complied with the law as their deliveries of painkillers - 81M over eight years to a population under 100K - were based on fully legal prescriptions.
nytimes
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a national deal in which the three distributors agreed to pay $21B to resolve most of the lawsuits against them; a deal hard-hit West Virginia communities were not part of.
wapo
While the plaintiffs are still considering whether to appeal, a group of more than 60 West Virginia cities and towns reportedly agreed on Tues. to a $400M deal with the three distributors, postponing a trial expected to start that day.
WV MetroNews

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The Spin

Establishment-critical narrative

The distributors are the guiltiest party in the opioid crisis. These companies have evaded regulations and failed to notify orders flagged as suspicious while lobbying against US government efforts to suspend murky drug shipments.

The New York Times

Pro-establishment narrative

It's hard to blame the epidemic on the pharmaceutical companies when a constellation of customers, doctors, and federal agencies also has their share of responsibility. Instead of looking for a scapegoat, holistic efforts should've been taken to curb the opioid crisis before it got worse.