Boone and Kentucky counties announced Tuesday night they would join other local communities in suing the United States’ three largest wholesale drug distributors for fueling the opioid epidemic that President Trump recently declared a national emergency.
According to a news release from the county fiscal courts, the three companies -- AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corporation -- did not adequately monitor the amount of opioid medications being requested by and shipped to pharmacies in the area.
“Our community is spending millions of dollars mitigating the impact of corporate decisions flooding Northern Kentucky with highly addictive opioid pills, and we have an obligation to our citizens to seek remedy from those who unlawfully profited from this epidemic,” Kenton County Judge Kris Knochelmann said.
A similar suit filed by the city of Cincinnati Aug. 15 claimed more than 290 million opioids were distributed in Hamilton County alone between 2010 and 2015 -- enough to keep every single person in the county supplied for more than a year.
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The suit claimed unscrupulous or lax business practices on the part of the distributors allowed some pharmacies to become “pill farms” that prescribed opioids plentifully and without caution, leading to addiction, withdrawal and mounting drug abuse among people who received these prescriptions.
All three distributors said in response to Cincinnati's suit that they took their responsibility to monitor opioid traffic seriously and worked with experts to help combat opioid abuse.
However, all three have also been investigated or fine by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for failing to report suspicious orders like those communities claim fueled the epidemic.
