J&J is charged with responsibility for the opioid crisis in the US

The US corporation Johnson & Johnson and three other pharmaceutical companies are charged with joint responsibility for the opioid crisis in the US. Three California counties and the city of Oakland filed for billions in damages from Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Endo and Allergan. The companies are accused of downplaying the risks of strong opioid pain relievers out of greed for profit. "The defendants put profit before life and misled the public about the real dangers of opioids," said Santa Clara County Legal Representative James Williams. The pharmaceutical companies have deliberately downplayed the dangers of long-term use of opioids. The plaintiffs - the California counties of Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Orange, as well as the city of Oakland - are calling for companies to stop marketing their pain medication in the future. The state of California suffered enormous damage, while the accused companies, for example, had "blockbuster profits" of $ 11 billion in 2014 from the opioids. The opioids include the pain reliever fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than the illicit opioid drug heroin. Thousands of lawsuits related to the opioid crisis have already been filed in US courts. In 2019 alone, 50,000 people died from overuse of opioids in the United States. According to the US health authority CDC, there were almost half a million fatalities within two decades. Johnson & Johnson had already been fined $ 465 million in 2019 in connection with the opioid crisis because the court in Oklahoma believed the company had downplayed the risks. J&J appealed, a decision is pending. The legal proceedings that have now been initiated come at an inopportune time for J&J as the US company is already embroiled in a baby powder scandal. There are also problems with his corona vaccine. Its use in the United States was suspended after reports of dangerous blood clots in six women vaccinated with it. In addition, production of the vaccine was stopped at a Baltimore plant after a production breakdown there rendered many vaccine doses unusable.