The opioid-pushing pharmaceutical companies may finally be forced to pay some of their billions to help remediate the crisis they helped manufacture. The state of Oklahoma won a big court victory against Johnson & Johnson, the huge corporation that downplayed the risks of opioids while keeping the country awash in their deadly product.
Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries supplied 60% of the ingredients in all painkillers sold across the country. While opioids were initially used in extreme cases like cancer and end-of-life pain management, drug companies aggressively expanded their market and downplayed the risks.
Now that Oklahoma scored a victory over opioids (which were being prescribed at the rate of 479 prescriptions every hour in the state), next up is a mega-lawsuit brought by 40 states made up of 2,000 plaintiffs. The corporate opioid-pushers have killed hundreds of thousands of people across the country in the name of profit. Here’s hoping the billions they lose in court will help rein in these deadly pain pills. (Btw, for more about this cartoon and other behind-the-scenes videos and prints, you can support me over on my Patreon page.)