My mother has become addicted to her pain medication. Her addiction has ruined our family as she will do anything to get more pain medication. Who can we sue for causing my mother to become addicted?
Prescription medication addiction is really in the news now. Cities, counties and even states are suing drug manufactures for causing the “Opioid Addiction Crisis”, addicts are suing their doctors and congress is getting ready to investigate this national problem.
Every drug in the United States must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before being offered to the public. Drug companies spend billions of dollars and many years researching and developing drugs. Once they have a potential drug in their possession they then patent that drug and start testing it on animals then they graduate to human testing, all of which can take years to accomplish.
After the completion of animal testing they submit the drug to the FDA for testing in humans. The FDA has strict protocols for new drugs where they monitor the results of all the tests as the drug goes through its human trials. The protocol requires that about half of the people in the trial get the active drug, in more than one strength, and the other half get placebos, which is nothing but an inactive drug or often called a “sugar pill”. Then the FDA watches for the results of both active and inactive drugs as well as the side effects of the drug. After proving to the FDA the drug is safe and effective in the doses prescribed, then and only then will the FDA approve the drug for public use. This can also take years.
If the FDA has approved the drug as safe and effective, then is it possible to sue your mom’s doctor if she becomes addicted? The answer is yes, her doctor may be liable for medical malpractice provided the doctor has breached his duty of care to her. The doctor is responsible for choosing the drug, its strength, how often it is prescribed to be taken, how often he refills the drug and even his failure to notice her addiction developing.
Unfortunately, some addicts do overdose and some even die. If the drug has been approved by the FDA as safe and effective how can you sue the drug manufacture? Drug companies have the same duty of care to the public as a doctor but since they do not determine the type of drug, the strength or the frequency to be taken let alone prescribe it to the patient it is much harder to win a case against a manufacture. However, they do have the duty to tell the FDA anything they know about the drug as well as any side effects they find. Hiding or even withholding this information is certainly a cause for harm against the public which is why plaintiff lawyers always would rather sue the deep pockets of the drug manufactures then the small pockets of doctors. Most overdose cases find the addict was at fault because they took too much of the drug or combined it with other drugs against the advice of the manufacture and the doctor.
The Centers for Disease Control say 91 people die every day from opioid overdose in the USA and several states have or are preparing to file law suits against opioid manufactories. Ohio is one of those states which claim in their suit that opioids are now the most prescribed class of drugs; they generated $11 billion in revenue for companies in 2014 alone.
Cabell County West Virginia has a population of approximately 96,000 people but for 5 years, 2007 to 2012, drug distributors sent almost 40 million doses of opioids to their county. That is about 400 pills for every adult and child in the county. Cabell County is suing drug distributors such as McKesson and Cardinal Health as well as drug stores CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and others claiming they violated federal control laws that require distribution companies to report suspicious orders of narcotics to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) such as unusually large or frequent orders.
The U.S. Surgeon General connected this opioid crisis to “heavy marketing of opioids to doctors, many who were taught, incorrectly, that opioids are not addictive when prescribed for legitimate pain.” When these opioid patients no longer can get enough of the opioids they turn to street drugs such as heroin.
The answer to your question of who can you sue seems to be your momís doctor, her pharmacy where she gets her opioids, the distributor who supplies her pharmacy and even the manufactures of the opioids. If someone is responsible for her or taking care of her, then they may even be liable for not stopping her drug use.
More important than who you can sue is what can you do right now to stop her addiction? What are you willing to do to stop her from possibly overdosing and dying from all the drug use? You need to protect her and the rest of your family from the opioid crisis.