California, Hawaii, Maine and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits Monday against Purdue Pharma, bringing the total number of states accusing the OxyContin maker of helping to ignite the nationwide opioid crisis to at least 48, CNBC.com reported. Like other states, the four new lawsuits accuse the privately held company and its owners, the Sackler family, of downplaying the risks of addiction to OxyContin while exaggerating its benefits. Prosecutors say the company’s marketing practices encouraged doctors to push higher doses of the narcotic and contributed to a public health crisis that has caused thousands of overdoses in the U.S. each year. “Purdue and the Sacklers traded the health and well being of Californians for profit and created an unprecedented national public health crisis in the process,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said on Monday. “We will hold them accountable.” OxyContin is a prescription drug used to treat moderate-to-severe pain in adults. From 1999 to 2017, nearly 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. OxyContin first came on the market in 1996. The attorneys representing Purdue say accusations against the company are “not supported by facts and are fundamentally flawed,” adding its opioid painkiller represents less than 2% of the U.S. market. They also say recent lawsuits are in many regards a repurpose of old allegations.
