All prescription opioids come with a wealth of governmental reviewed warnings on the packaging and any inserts. At what point do we stop excusing willful ignorance?

I don't think the charge of creating a public nuisance requires proof of criminal wrong-doing. It only requires willful participation in a court-determined nuisance.

Tell that to the makers of: silicone breast implants, baby powder (J&J), asbestos, (ETA:) cigarettes and guns.

Hired phd who wrote books on opioid addictions of the 19th and 20th century up now. Tedious.

Also, judge has consistently overruled the  objections by the defense regarding undisclosed evidence and relevance of evidence.

I knew because I hung out with a bunch of degenerates who did a bunch of drugs growing up. But you have a point, if a doctor is just a bartender for drugs, they need to do their own research. Good thing we had the "epidemic" so now people don't have an excuse like they did in the 90's and before.

The evidence against those implants is tenuous at best. Asbestos was removed ages ago from talc. There is no valid evidence tying female cancers and modern talc powder.

Those were money grabs as is this case.

Gun owners need to hope JJ prevails. Laws protecting gun makers were created by Congress and can be killed by Congress.

Willful? Never excuse it. Of course those inserts are exactly what antivaxxers point to when claiming vaccines are so dangerous. So now it's a guessing game which warnings are legit concerns and which are CYA nonsense because someone in a test group died from a most likely unrelated complication.

My point exactly.  Legal products that were used as money grabs. At some point, the media frenzy will cause gun manufacturers to lose their protection.  Very soon after the 2020 elections if a D becomes POTUS.  They will be able to say they support the 2A , while letting the manufacturers of guns and ammo be sued into bankruptcy.

Mrs Rabinowitz just told me her mother gave her peragoric (sic) for colic.  Peragoric contains opioids.

She is not a druggie unless you count sweet tea.

Meh. Junkies will just find more excuses because that is what junkies do.   "It's not my fault because (fill in unmitigated bullshit here)."

define sweet tea.

Because I grew up in NC on sweet tea that was normal tea with some sugar, and I've been to weddings in the Deep South where their idea of sweet tea was Diabeetus In A Cup.

Diabetes in a cup ...

Seems legit. No matter what leads up to it is invalidated by the fact they are now addicted.

Yeah, unless someone tied you down and poured that drink down your throat, forced that cigarette into your festering gob, or forced opiates into your mouth when you were not in pain, yeah, it is on you. Personal responsibility--how does it work?

Same phd still on stand. It is set up for the following.

1.  There was a narcotic epidemic post ACW.
2.  Everyone knew opioids were addictive.
3.  "Narcotic conservatism" stemmed the flow.
4.  Alternative pain killers became widely known.
5.  Industry restraint controlled widespread overuse.
6. In 1970s,  industry cast off restraints and pushed opioids as a safe treatment for pain.
7.  JJ was a willing kingpin for oversupply.

The mantra OK rolled out yesterday was, "If you oversupply, people will die."

OK intends to link JJ to "oversupply."

Research strongly suggests that druggies keep using not because they enjoy the drug, but rather they fear withdrawal.

Works great, until you end up with an "epidemic" and a shit ton of lawsuits.

Sucks when reality and ideology collide. Of course no one will learn anything from it. Folks like yourself will insist the medical industry made no mistakes, the addicts will insist they made no mistakes, and the lawyers make a buttload. Toot toot!

If you can be sued successfully for obeying the letter of the law and punished as a result, we are fucked.

If JJ loses, we are all royally fucked.

If the problem started in the 1970's it would've been a crisis before.

Also, yeah, everybody knew that were addictive but they were using them anyway during WW2 and later. Because they work.

Shit, there's opioids listed on WHO's list of Essential Medicines.

This trial is about feels and not justice.

And lack of individual responsibility is how you get an "epidemic."  Didn't have one when there was zero controls on opiates. Now we have one with some of the most stringent controls ever. Funny how government makes shit worse, isn't it?

haha, this.  "I didn't know that X was bad for me!!  I just did it because it made me feel all sorts of weird, see shit and act differently than I normally do!!!  I had no idea that consuming something that had such an effect on my physiology could be detrimental!"

ETA: A good example is cigarettes.  People have known they are not really "good" or "healthy" before there was any science behind it, the term coffin nails as slang for cigarettes appeared in the 1880s.

Being addicted to "painkillers" of various sorts has been a known problem for a very long time.  Laudnum, even various versions of cocaine.  These were known problems and society has been aware of their properties for over a century and longer.

And if they got rid of 100 percent of all doctor and pharma supplied opiates; America would still have an "Opioid Crisis" because of the illegal narcotics trade.

They just posted an internal JJ document that uses the phrase "convince doctors" to prescribe fentanyl patches for chronic pain.

Oh my God! Salesmen were told to sell a product that worked better than pills.

Someone ought to hang.

I suppose all the Budweiser commercials trying to convince people to drink their beer and not Miller is why there are drunk drivers?  And thus it is Anheuser-Busch's fault?

ETA:  I would be a sarcastic bastard on cross.

At one time opioids were legal.  There were a lot of people who used them in various forms, then got up every day and went to work.  The same with alcohol.  I used to work with people who got off work and went out and got hammered every night.  Then they got up and went to work.  They were productive citizens, for the most part.  Now, will this lifestyle eventually kill them.  Sure.  Should the government regulate it?  Well, I don't know.

As I get older, I seem to be spending more and more time in hospitals, where this stuff is handed out.  Does it help?  Sure.  Imagine what waking up in ICU after open heart surgery with only some Tylenol to relieve pain would be like.

Do they not have it in Indiana? Some places here it might as well be simple syrup steeped in some tea bags. You have to know how strong they make it wherever you're going on the scale from "normal" to "hope you have good dental insurance" and get them to mix it with an appropriate amount of unsweet.

Even when I was a dumb teenager I knew to read the insert on any prescription I got. They all come with one, and it's pretty simple stuff to read. If someone skipped that then they are 100% responsible for their own stupidity.

Then again, they won't get addicted unless they also ignore the dosing/duration in most cases. There will be outliers, but most pain medication prescriptions are not enough to get a person addicted if used as directed.

I would like to see the methodology of that research, because it sounds like utter BS.

This is part of why judges should not be elected officials.

Judge is allowing OK's hired guns to run roughshod over JJ.

He rarely sustains any JJ objections.

Female rep for JJ (as official rep) is being treated shabbily and spoken to in ways that would elicit violence if someone spoke to your wife/SO in such a way.

My opinion of lawyers is at an all-time low.

or....

or....

the judge in inclined to rule for JJ and is denying OK any chance at winning on appeal.

Wheels within wheels....

Sounds like the judge is a son of a bitch, but I don't usually like people in/from Oklahoma

Hopefully it will give excessive cause for the appeals court to overturn the case.

Personal responsibility is dead.  Long live whatever this bullshit is

Since my step-son works for the firm representing OK, I have been told by Mrs Rabinowitz not to talk about it around him and his wife.

At one time he was the president of the College GOP at OU.  He is now an Austin, Beto-loving lib.  He got both his BBA and JDL (lawyer thing) from OU.  Frankly, when it comes to business and capitalism, he doesn't know shit.  I guess a biz degree from Soonerland doesn't mean much.

During the trial, OK present 4 sales call slips which suggested that the sales rep undersold side effects and oversold benefits.  Keep in mind that OK was about to roll in about 25 lage file boxes of these JJ salesperson call slip to enter into evidence.  The State went through well over 100,000 to find four that looked bad.  This, to them, is proof that JJ is the kingpin in the opioid "crisis" in OK.

Here are some of the gems from my step son and is wife:

1.  Drugs should not be advertised to the general public.  They might force their doc to write a script for something they don't need.  Me:  People have a right to information and no doc has to write jack shit for anyone.
2.  JJ made money growing poppies in Australia.  Me:  Any good manufacturer gets control of his raw materials.  If they hadn't done this, OK would be saying "So you, JJ, just bought opioids off the market without knowing exactly how, where, and by whom they were grown?
3.  Other companies bought raw opioids from JJ.  Me:  The amount of opioids imported is limited by the .gov as is purity and percent active ingredient.
4.  Sales literature from JJ tells salespersons to "convince doctors" to write opioid patches for use with chronic, non-malignancy pain.  Convince essentially means "force."  Me:  No one forces docs to do anything.  JJ never forged a script.  JJ never forced a pill down anyone's throat or a patch onto anyone's skin.
5.  JJ sales force called on doctors thousands of times.  Docs that were called on wrote more scripts than those who did not.  Me:  So if there is a better med out there than what is being used now for chronic pain and it will benefit people, it is wrong to sell it aggressively?
6.  JJ paid for continuing education courses/meetings out of their "marketing" budget instead of an "educational" budget.  Evil!!!  Me:  So what.  It is an expense.  It gets written off.  The goal of a company is to make money.

It goes on and on.

When I start asking the following, stepson's wife gets really worked up?

1.  We are personally responsible for our own actions.
2.  Show me where opioids properly prescribed and administered for chronic, long-term pain other than cancer have led to significant rates of addiction (over 5%.
3.  What percentage of opioid deaths are of people who started using them as part of a well-managed, long-term pain management program?
4.  How  many deaths from opioids had other co-morbidities?
5.  What percentage of deaths involved illegal drugs?

Finally, what laws did JJ break?

What it comes down to is this.  JJ has money.  They don't have to be guilty of breaking any laws in order to be found liable.  It is all about feels.  Correct that.  IT IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.

that's sad.  It's a damning indictment of college today.

How dare you suggest the government has any culpability at all in this; and of course it's never the actual junkie's fault.

Burn the fucking doctors, they did this. Because, well.....because.  I *feel* they are at fault.

JJ is fucked.  The State brought in internal documents yesterday from one branch of JJ warning the sales department that they were underselling the hazards and seriously overselling the safety of the Fentenyl patches and that it needed to stop.  It was from years ago.

Up until this point I was siding strongly with JJ.  If they sold the product using false claims that they knew were false and didn't stop, it's hard to side with them.

ok, NOW it's a real trial!

Attached File

Thanks for the updates and reporting.  I find this interesting as it will change the dynamics for several different industries.

How many fentenyl patchs did they sell?  Also why is Oklahoma involved?

Fent patches are pretty damn safe even when not used Correctly I've had several pts with ams that had multiple patches on due to a dumb ass family member or home health nurse none died of an overdose

+1

Amazeballs painkillers are fucking awesome.   Enough so that if we have to pick between access to them when needed and protecting mouthbreathers, the mouthbreathers need to go.

Recap:

Who is suing?  State of Oklahoma
Who are they suing?  Johnson & Johnson, Jansen
Why:  OK blames JJ for “opioid crisis” in OK.  Says JJ flooded the market with opioids they sold under their own name and for selling opioids to other opioid-containing products manufacturers
How?  Suing under a theory of the “creation of a public nuisance” law.  JJ doesn’t have to have broken the law.  JJ has to be shown to be careless and callous.
For how much?  More than 15 billion dollars
What will they do with the money?  Fund opioid abatement programs.

I was solidly on the side of JJ after being at the trial for the first two days.  However, the memos from the FDA or internal memos warned marketing that they were overselling benefits and downplaying problems with Fentanyl patches.

JJ is fucked.

We are all fucked since the success of this case will put every business on the planet at risk for similar suits.

Can any one name other countries that have opioid problems?

My bet is it’s only us. Why is that? Outside looking in fwiw.

This whole thing just chaps my ass! My wife and I are getting up in years. We've both had joint replacements and a couple of other surgeries (one recently). Now we're being told to use aspirin because 'for the children' and addicts. Good Dr's are running scared, and I can't blame them.

Two things are sure to happen. First, several lawyers in Austin will be driving nicer cars. Second, many, many people will suffer greatly and unneccesarily because of a crackdown on opioids.

Sad.