Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton has joined dozens of other states to launch an investigation into the role that pharmaceutical companies may be playing in feeding the devastating opioid addiction crisis, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Bexar County Commissioners announced last week they were considering a lawsuit against the drug companies for the same reason.
Paxton spokesman Mary Rylander tells News Radio 1200 WOAI they have already begun requests for information from the drug manufacturers, filing eight investigative subpoenas on eight companies that make highly addictive painkillers like OxyCodone.
"The goal of this phase of the investigation is to collect all information that we can, so that the multi-state coalition can effectively evaluate whether the manufacturers or distributors engaged in unlawful practices," Rylander said.
He says the next phase of the investigation will seek to determine if the drug companies attempted to create or prolong the addiction crisis.
"We will determine an appropriate course of action once it is determine what role these companies may have played."
The allegations against Big Pharma in the opioid crisis are similar to the tobacco settlement back in the 1990s. The drug companies are accused of concealing or downplaying the addictive power of the painkillers, urging doctors to widely prescribe their drugs by using incentives, and conspired to limit research into new less addictive pain killing drugs. The result, officials allege, is that taxpayers have been saddled with the economic and social burden of the opioid addiction crisis.
Those costs include health care, hospitalization, welfare costs, and the lost productivity of opioid addicts.
The drug companies say they manufacture a needed legal product which is valued by the medical community for its ability to combat chronic or severe pain and allow patients to return to their normal lives. As for addictions, the drug companies echo the argument successfully used by firearms manufacturers, that they can't control what happens to their product once its out of their hands, and are not responsible if some users of painkillers misuse them.