A few days ago, a court in the state of Oklahoma gave a judgement that sent ripples through the health industry in the US, especially the rich, powerful and politically connected part of it euphemistically referred to as ‘Big Pharma’. The judge found the multinational company Johnson & Johnson guilty in a suit brought against it by the State of Oklahoma. He awarded damages of $572 million against the company.
Johnson & Johnson is one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world, with a market capitalisation of $346.1 billion. It has subsidiaries with brand names recognised all over the world, such as Janssen Pharmaceutical, Janssen Cilag, Neutrogena, DePuy Synthes, Ethicon, Actelion and several others.
Members of the board are not exactly going to be selling the shirt off their back to stave off bankruptcy. The issues though, go much deeper and may represent the beginning of a fightback by mainstream society in a battle that is devastating and debilitating whole neighbourhoods in the US and some other countries.
For more than half a century, there has been a growing problem concerning the use and misuse of opium and its derivatives. This has culminated in a situation in which the US – a country with 5 percent of the population of the world, was consuming 95 percent of the opiates in the world. Clearly the country had a problem, and it was not just about pain, but addiction.
The problem was already at its apogee by the time President Donald Trump got into office in 2017. To date, lives of countless young people have been wrecked by opiate addiction. A culture of crime, indolence and disease has been fostered in an age demographic that was supposed to be the most productive in society. The black community has been especially hard hit, but no segment of society has been spared. White collar professionals, high school dropouts, even doctors, nurses and other health professionals have been consumed in the epidemic.
The Oklahoma court case is really something of a test case as society seeks an answer to the question – “Who, or what, is to be held responsible for so many wrecked lives?”
In the 1980s Johnson & Johnson saw a business opportunity in scaling up production to meet the increasing prescriptions by doctors of powerful opium-based drugs for patients who were living with painful conditions such as arthritis, various cancers and sickle cell anaemia. The patients themselves were demanding powerful painkillers from their doctors. It was said that the pharmaceutical companies in subtle ways influenced both the demand and the readiness of doctors to prescribe the drugs.
The company decided that it needed a larger supply of opium in order to increase the production of their popular painkiller – Tylenol with codeine. They bought up a company that grew opium poppies in Tasmania, on the coast of Australia. By 2015, not only were they producing more Tylenol with codeine, but they also became the leading supplier of the raw ingredient for painkillers in the US. They developed a special strain of opium poppy that provided the core agent in Oxycontin, a product that became a blockbuster prescription drug for Purdue Pharma, a major drug company, raking in billions of dollars in revenue.
In singling out J&J for judgement last week, Judge Thad Balkman of Cleveland County District Court in Norman, Oklahoma averred that the company should be held at least partly responsible for decades of opioid addiction and thousands of overdose deaths in the State of Oklahoma. The judge cited the overly aggressive marketing tactics of the company.
Of course, Johnson & Johnson has denied culpability, and promised to appeal the judgement.
The Johnson & Johnson brand has been facing some perception challenges in the recent past. There have been a spate of lawsuits claiming its talcum powder caused ovarian cancer, and there have been cases claiming harm from its pelvic mesh and its anti-stroke drug Xarelto.
The nervous anticipation concerning the Oklahoma court verdict turned out to have been exaggerated, as the price of the company’s stock actually rose following the court ruling. Perhaps the investors were exhaling in relief, because they had expected the judgement to be more severe!
However, the true effect of the Johnson & Johnson judgment may be to open up the pandora’s box and lead to new lawsuits, not just by governments now, but also individual and class-action suits by patients and families, suing to be compensated for wrecked lives.
Interestingly, some years ago, the Lagos state government of Babatunde Raji Fashola seriously mulled and elaborately prepared for a similar lawsuit. The Lagos case was going to be against tobacco companies, who were responsible for tobacco-related illnesses and deaths that were daily recorded in every one of the health facilities in the state. Doctors compiled and collated the costs of such treatments undertaken in the 26 or so secondary and tertiary health facilities owned by the Lagos State government. As expected, the total came to a humongous sum.
The case did not get to court. Perhaps it is still work in progress. Fashola was probably working ahead of his time. Without a doubt, such laws suits will come up in Nigeria in the not-too-distant future.
Meanwhile, opiate addiction continues to ravage many nations, including Nigeria, as society struggles to balance the use of drugs that are necessary to make life bearable for an increasing population of human beings who live daily with pain, with the increasing misuse of the same drugs, which is wrecking lives in the inner cities of the US, as well as in the squalid dives of Ipodo, Lagos, and Kano, and Kaduna.
FEMI OLUGBILE
