In the first legal reckoning of its kind, a trial judge in a small, mostly rural state crippled by opioid abuse has delivered a huge blow to a pharmaceutical manufacturer. May this be harbinger of additional unsparing corporate justice for an epidemic that has addicted and killed Americans by the hundreds of thousands.
Assuming the award holds up on appeal, every last dollar of the $572 million Johnson & Johnson will be forced to pay Oklahoma must be used smartly to combat over-reliance on the powerful painkillers, without preventing doctors from intelligently prescribing them for those who need them to manage terrible pain.
The facts before Judge Thad Balkman regarding J&J were compelling: The company contracted with poppy growers overseas to provide most of the opiates that drug companies used, then, over the course of many years, pushed the products en masse to doctors, claiming they were safe and effective.
It raises eyebrows that the penalty is more than double the $270 million Purdue Pharma, the giant of the industry, agreed to pay, despite the fact that J&J, through subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, claimed a relative sliver of the market.
Call it a tough but necessary pill to swallow.
