Drug companies reach opioids settlement ahead of landmark US trial

CLEVELAND — Three leading American drug distributors and an Israeli drugmaker blamed for a deadly US opioid epidemic settled a bellwether civil lawsuit with 2 Ohio counties Monday, just hours before they were to go on trial, a federal judge announced.

The $260 million deal set the basis for a broader potential multi-billion dollar payout to some 2,700 addiction-ravaged communities nationwide that had signed on to the Cleveland lawsuit, the first in a federal court to address the causes of the crisis. 

Officials from Ohio's Summit and Cuyahoga counties -- which include the cities of Akron and Cleveland -- said they would be able to almost immediately begin boosting funds to address the massive fallout from the crisis.

The addiction epidemic has placed huge burdens on hospitals and emergency services, and on families supporting addicts and caring for children with addicted parents or parents who have died.

"Cuyahoga County has seen thousands of people die over the last several years. It's a tragedy. Summit County is no different," said Cuyahoga prosecutor Michael O'Malley.

"Our hearts go out to the families who have been touched by this," said Ilene Shapiro, the chief executive of Summit County.

"Whatever we can do to help these families rebuild and get as healthy as they can and move forward is what we are trying to do."

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS 

The settlement involved the 3 leading US drug distributors, some of the largest companies in the country -- Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson Corp.

It also included Israel's Teva, one of the world's largest generic drug manufacturers.

Pharmacy chain Walgreens opted out of the deal and will go to trial at a later date, said Federal District Judge Dan Polster. A small Ohio distributor also settled in a separate deal.

A trial would have examined allegations that the makers of the prescription painkillers and pharmaceutical distributors pushed billions of pills into communities without due care over 2 decades, making it excessively easy for patients to become addicted and creating a permanent demand.

The companies reaped tens of billions of dollars in profits while overdose deaths soared above 400,000 over 2 decades -- more than 70,000 in 2017 alone.

Plaintiffs had amassed large amounts of evidence showing that the companies knew they were fomenting an epidemic of addiction.

The deal, though, does not require the companies to admit wrongdoing.

"While the companies strongly dispute the allegations made by the two counties, they believe settling the bellwether trial is an important stepping stone to achieving a global resolution and delivering meaningful relief," the giant distributors said in a statement.

The prospects of more litigation sent the shares of the 3 distributors tumbling. AmerisourceBergen fell 3.4 percent, McKesson lost 3.2 percent, and Cardinal Health lost 2.2 percent.

Teva gained 8.8 percent on the relatively small cash payout it will make to the two countries, $20 million.

Walgreens meanwhile lost 1.5 percent as it planned to fight in court.

TALKS CONTINUE 

Talks continued with the broader group of plaintiffs for a settlement likely worth tens of billions of dollars in cash and in-kind payments, mainly free drugs for treating addiction.

Negotiations for a global deal worth a reported $48 billion -- but only $18 billion in cash -- broke down Friday amid differences between some states and smaller communities over the total value and how the money would be distributed.

Officials from 4 states who had backed the tentative deal on Friday called the 2-counties agreement "an important step," but said a global settlement could take weeks.

"The global resolution on the table will distribute funds fairly between states, counties and cities while also ensuring that these companies change their business practices to prevent a public health crisis like this from ever happening again," said the attorneys general of North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Major drug manufacturers and distributors have already struck deals worth billions of dollars with states and local governments around the country to compensate them for the costs of the epidemic.

A study by the Society of Actuaries estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the US economy at least $631 billion from 2015 to 2018. 

In August, Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin, one of the leading painkillers driving the addiction epidemic, reached a deal with 29 states and territories to compensate them. 

Purdue said the deal would cost it $10 billion and force it into bankruptcy, but critics in states and localities that opposed the deal say it is worth much less, and demanded the family that built Purdue, the Sacklers, pay billions more out of their own fortune.

In an Oklahoma trial in August, drug maker Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $572 million to compensate the state.

The company then reached a separate deal in the Cleveland case to pay the 2 counties $20.4 million.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

UK fears crisis as 11.5 million get potentially addictive drugs

LONDON - More and more Britons are being prescribed potentially addictive medicines like sleeping pills, opioids and other painkillers, raising the risk of a drug crisis like the one in the United States, health officials said on Tuesday.

In a government-commissioned report, researchers at Public Health England (PHE) said evidence showed that "since at least 10 years ago more people are being prescribed more of these medicines and often for longer".

In 2017 to 2018 alone, 11.5 million adults in England - more than a quarter of the adult population - was prescribed one or more of the medicines under review, the PHE analysis found.

The medicines included anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines and sleeping pills known as z-drugs, as well as the epilepsy and anxiety medicines gabapentin and pregabalin, antidepressants, and opioid pain medicines.

Many of these can be addictive and could cause problems for people taking them or coming off them, PHE said. The report also found higher rates of prescribing to women and older people.

While prescribing of some drugs, like benzodiazepines and opioids, has dipped a little recently amid fears about the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States, others, such as the gabapentin, pregabalin, and some antidepressants, are being prescribed more often and for longer.

"This means more people are at risk of becoming addicted to them or having problems when they stop using them," PHE said.

"It also costs the NHS (National Health Service) a lot of money, some of which is wasted because the medicines do not work for everyone all the time, especially if they are used for too long."

An opioid epidemic in the United States has killed almost half a million Americans since 1999, and a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum earlier this year warned that the United States "is by no means alone in facing this crisis."

The Paris-based OECD said deaths linked to opioid use were rising sharply in Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and England and Wales.

Responding to the PHE report, Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said it is watching the U.S. crisis closely and aiming to take avoiding action.

"We take the experience in the U.S. of dependence and addiction to opioids very seriously and are following ... developments ... to learn from the actions other countries are taking to tackle this issue," it said in a statement. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Marie Kondo for smartphones? Google's digital detox helps users reclaim joy

MANILA – Google is urging Filipinos to use a built-in feature of its Android operating system to disconnect, declutter and spark joy in their digital lives.

Baked into Android 9 Pie, the Digital Wellbeing Dashboard allows users to track and control their use of applications and control how many notifications they receive and in what form.

Google acknowledged the inevitable comparisons between the dashboard and Japan's Marie Kondo, who exploded on Netflix by encouraging people to organize their living spaces and keep only items that spark joy.

"KonMari is great but it doesn't work on USB cables... The awareness component is a large part. Providing the tools so that they can be aware of what’s happening, that is, I think, some of the most powerful things we can do," said Glenn Murphy, Android UX director for Google. 

"These moments of planned disconnection actually feel joyful. People are happiest when they’re productive on their phone. We can enable technology to reduce stress in peoples lives," Murphy said.

Google's Android is on 2 billion devices worldwide and dominates Apple's iOS operating system in terms of reach. The Philippines has 60 million smartphone screens based on combined data from local carriers.

Majority of smartphone users around the world have expressed "some concern" over the amount of time they spend online, according to the Android UX study "Toward JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out and the Freedom of Disconnecting."

Users also felt obliged to respond to every notification they received causing undue stress, according to the global poll of cunsumers aged 18 to 65.

"One of the things we’ve found out is that time spent using a product doesn’t mean happiness. Time is not correlated with satisfaction," Murphy said during a conference call with Southeast Asian journalists. 

"What we’ve seen is that technology is used in so many different ways. Phones are super useful but they can also be distracting," he added. 

Digital Wellbeing has a "Wind Down" feature where the entire screen turns to black and white so that "interesting images" will not be able to draw users attention especially at night, Murphy said.

Users can completely turn off notifications including pop-ups on the screen while retaining access to productivity apps such as maps. 

Developers should adapt to the rapidly changing technology by creating the right tools for consumers, Murphy said.

"If you have the right tools to use the phone in the ways that they want to, then I totally see this to bring more balance in people’s lives," he said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Experts fear e-cigarettes fuel teen addiction

E-cigarettes can be an effective tool for smokers aiming to kick their tobacco habit, but officials fear the devices are also creating nicotine addiction among adolescents
.
"E-cigarettes show tremendous promise as a tool for helping smokers who don't respond to other approaches for quitting smoking," Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, said Friday, during a presentation with other health officials.

 "What concerns us is very recent data from the US showing surprising high rates of e-cigarette use by teenagers," he said, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in California.

A recent annual survey of more than 40,000 US high school students showed that in the last month, 8.7 percent of 14-year-olds had used the battery-operated devices that deliver vaporized nicotine into an aerosol inhaled by the user.

And the number only increased with age: 16.2 percent of 16-year-olds and 17.1 percent of 18-year-olds had done the same.

"That's a concern because this may be a unique and new pathway to nicotine exposure," Compton said.

In recent months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that use of e-cigarettes by young non-smokers had tripled from 2011 to 2013, and warned that nicotine can affect brain development in teenagers.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April proposed restrictions on the country's $2-billion e-cigarette industry, such as requiring sellers to enforce a minimum age.

- 'Far less dangerous' -

"Nicotine can be harmful to the growing brain, so it's best if young people avoid it," said Deborah Arnott, head of Britain-based nonprofit Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

"But if they're going to experiment, it's better to use e-cigarettes, as vaping is far less dangerous than smoking and much less addictive," she said.

"So far in the UK and the US, smoking rates are going down more than e-cigarette use is growing. This would not be the case if vaping really were a gateway into smoking," Arnott added.

In the study of 40,000 US teenagers, only four percent of 14-year-olds, seven percent of 16-year-olds and 14 percent of 18-year-olds had smoked real cigarettes in the last month.

E-cigarettes play an important role in helping users quit or reduce smoking, according to the latest research published in December by the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent, international organization that evaluates medical research.

The group conducted two studies showing that around nine percent of those using e-cigarettes were able to stop smoking for at least a year, while only four percent of those who used placebo e-cigarettes were able to.

Among those who were unable to quit smoking, 36 percent of those using e-cigarettes were able to cut their tobacco consumption by half, compared to 28 percent in the placebo group.

"There are likely public health benefits from e-cigarettes if they provide a pathway for smokers to give up tobacco use," said Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health at Britain's University of Birmingham.

"There is evidence that this can happen, and little doubt that e-cigarettes are much less harmful to the smoker than tobacco," he said.

"However, if adolescents who have never used tobacco take up e-cigarette use, this is a matter of profound concern as they are deliberately exposing themselves to a highly addictive substance."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com