Westchester County Legislator MaryJane Shimsky has introduced a bill that would authorize the county attorney to file a lawsuit against large pharmaceutical companies for deceptive practices.
The effort comes as a way to stem the tide of rising costs for government and public safety from a growing drug epidemic in Westchester County, which has seen opioid-related deaths increase by 60 percent in the last year, according to county Legislator Ben Boykin, a White Plains Democrat.
According to the county Medical Examiner’s report, opioid and opiates, including heroin, were responsible for 83 percent of drug-related deaths in 2015. In that year alone, 107 Westchester residents died from overdoses.
Shimsky, a Hastings-on-Hudson Democrat who first introduced the plan on June 19, told the Review the legislation would be directed against a number of pharmaceutical companies that have used deceptive marketing of opioid painkillers, seeking punitive and compensatory damages for the costs already expended by Westchester County.
The bill would allow Westchester to join several other counties that have already filed lawsuits or are investigating pharmaceutical companies for over prescribing prescription painkillers, including Dutchess, Rockland, Ulster, Nassau, Suffolk, Broome, Erie, Sullivan and Orange.
Prescription overdoses are now responsible for killing more Americans than cocaine and heroin combined, and have moved past traffic accidents as the leading cause of death nationwide, according to Shimsky.
“We are seeing an enormous rise in fatalities over the last few years as a result of opioid addiction,” she said, adding that there is currently no estimate for how much the county would be seeking in compensation. “Over-marketing of opioids has created a mess in our county and we really do need to make sure that we get compensated for what we have already tried to do to clean up the problem.”
And just this month, the federal Food and Drug Administration requested Endo Pharmaceuticals, an international pharmaceutical manufacturer, remove Opana ER—a semi-synthetic opioid painkiller—from the market after concluding the drug’s potential for abuse outweighed its therapeutic value.
As part of Shimsky’s bill, which doesn’t take aim at any specific companies as of press time, Westchester would file its own lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies separate from those already filed by the other counties involved.
The proposal—it’s currently awaiting approval in committee—piggybacks other legislation pitched by Shimsky relating to opioid abuse in Westchester, namely the Prescription Drug Stewardship Program law, which would require pharmacy chains with more than three stores in Westchester County to become locations to dispose of unused medications; that idea was proposed in late May.
Jerry McKinstry, a spokesman for the Republican administration of County Executive Rob Astorino, declined to comment on the new proposal since it is still being worked out in committee. However, he said that the Astorino administration is also making an effort to deal with the opioid crisis with the launch of WORTHY: Westchester Opioid Response Teams Helping You, a program aimed at integrating the response of several county agencies, local officials and community leaders in recognizing heroin as a growing problem across Westchester.
