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Opioid Manufacturers Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: Darryl Gebien filed a class action lawsuit against 35 opioid drug manufacturers in Canada.
- Why: Gebien claims drug manufacturers caused a public health crisis by misleading the public and doctors about their opioid drugs, including fentanyl, morphine, and codeine.
- Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench.
Pharmaceutical companies that manufacture, market, distribute, and sell opioids in Canada have contributed to a public health crisis in the country, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
Plaintiff Darryl Gebien claims drug manufacturers failed to warn or educate health professionals and the public about the dangers associated with opioid use.
Gebien is seeking more than $1.1 billion in damages and names 35 separate drug manufacturers in his class action lawsuit, reports CBC News.
Opioid overdoses are estimated to have caused tens of thousands of deaths in Canada in the past two decades, according to the class action lawsuit.
Gebien seeks to represent individuals who have suffered after being prescribed opioid drugs since 1996, with relatives and heirs to qualifying deceased also potentially able to qualify.
Gebien, a former Ontario doctor, claims he developed an opioid addiction and ended up losing his job, medical license, and custody of his children after he was prescribed Percocet following a thumb injury, the lawsuit states.
The former doctor also spent two years in jail after he faced criminal charges related to the trafficking of fentanyl.
Drug manufacturers intentionally misled physicians and health-care practitioners about the safety and efficacy of the opioids, and targeted medical students and family doctors who worked with patients with chronic pain conditions, the class action lawsuit alleges.
Fentanyl, Morphine Listed Among Drugs Contributing to Public Health Crisis
Dozens of opioids, including fentanyl, morphine, methadone, opium, oxycodone, codeine, Percocet, oxymorphone, and hydromorphone are listed in the class action lawsuit as having contributed to the health crisis.
Gebien claims drug manufacturers used sales representatives to meet directly with doctors, who they would then enlist to spread good words about their drugs to other professionals in the field.
Drug manufacturers also created think tanks and patient advocacy groups which were used to push physicians to prescribe opioids for pain treatment, according to the class action lawsuit.
Gebien argues the drug manufacturers knew or should have known that the claims they made about their opioids risks and benefits were not backed by science, reports CBC News.
In the United States, Johnson & Johnson and three of the nation’s largest drug distributors agreed to pay $26 billion in a multi-state settlement to resolve claims they helped fuel a deadly opioid epidemic.
Do you believe opioid drug manufacturers are responsible for a public health crisis? Let us know in the comments!
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20 thoughts onOpioid Manufacturers Misled Public, Doctors, Caused Health Crisis, Class Action Claims
Iwasaddicted to fentanyl because I couldn’t stop opioids after abackinjury and a doctor prescribed for me
I can go on and on I’m still on the stuff today. It began in June 2006. Oxycontin to oxy neo , Percocet , fentenal. Every 28 days I pick up enough to kill a elephant. Granted I need meds to function in life but if I knew back then in 06 what I know today and how it affects my life and those around me. Well let’s just say things would of been different vId like someone to contact me about this. I see folks in the USA are getting pat just not us can’t folks. Nonsence I say
i am also caught in the opioid loop and want to be added to this lawsuit or please contact me on how to start my own. I have all the paperwork and whatnot needed. thank you, i am from BC
Over the course of the last three years, I have lost 36 friends and loved ones from opioid addiction and overdose. My spouse has endured more mental and emotional damage from the loss of his sons mother, who overdosed and passed away while she has full time custody of his son, and was not contacted by Police, CFS, or any other agency when she passed on. He lost his son, his sons mother, his sense of pride, mental wellbeing, all because of a legal synthetic opioid.
I have lost so many loved ones to the opioid crisis, my father overdosed on morphine in 2001, he got it from a friend because he was in pain. I know so many people who are still prescribed opioids from doctors who are giving them out like candy! The College of physicians/ pharmacists need to monitor closer
Add me please I already commented but forgot to ask u to add me. Thanks
My son then in his 30s became addicted to fentynl when he found my one and only prescription for pain. He then sought it off market and his life has been destroyed ever since. He is now a homeless drug addict for the past several years delving into crystal meth hoping that he would get off of the opioids, currently residing on the street of Vancouver, BC. He was so smart, talented, active, happy, sport oriented, life fullfilling before he started on those evil substances that the doctor prescribed me.
I almost died from the first 100mg patch that I ripped off my arm. If it had been in pill form I would not be writing this message. I’d be dead. Thank God it was a patch!!! I’m also hooked on opioid/oxycotin pills instead for back pain caused from degenerative discs and osteoarthritis. These drugs may stop pain but they also rob you off a normal life you once had before being on them. They have destroyed countless lives and our “trusted doctors” are administering them to us. WHY are they, and the producers allowed to give prescriptions drugs that destroy lives, and MURDER people, then get away with it?
I would like to get in on the class action lawsuits for this that are either pending or settled. Can you help put me on to the Attorney Firms handling this case in Canada/Manitoba and/or the USA?
My son’s life has been destroyed. My life was affected too but not fully destroyed. I am much older, more experienced, keeping this at bay.
My profession was a Specialized Diagnostic Medical Laboratroy Technologist for many years up until unnecessay government cut backs claiming they were going to reduce a deficit each time that has only grown exponentially. PM Trudeau is a criminal, pedophile too. He was charged and convicted 3 times the news claims in BC. Ugh. What a world. This is the person in charge of DESTROYING Canada Our Home!
He needs to be charged and thrown in jail for his crimes against all CDN Humanity. What’s taking so long???
Thank you.
Namaste. 🙂
Unfortunately things have gone from horrific to a place where the only explanation I can come up with to be able allow my obsessive compulsive temporarily damaged thought processes aswell as seritonin depleted brain that’s struggling to repair the neuro pathways which have been altered ( not for the better ) as a direct result of years and years of being not only overperscribed opiates along with multiple other dangerous pharmaceutical drugs by undereducated , sometimes miss informed and even worse as the state of things are here in British Columbia , medical personnel aswell as Dr’s of all variety who are handcuffed into following mandates forced upon them as treatment models they must present and follow no matter how much they may disagree with them. Mandates developed and implemented by a group of individuals whom unfortunately have become so far detached from the realities of what chemical dependency at its very nature truly is. Our Society has spent far too much time on trying to answer the question of why that the true focus and only way of ever slowing the explosion of growing number of people whos lives are being destroyed both directly amd indirectly by chemical dependency amd the mental wellness destruction it has on people (myself being a prime example)
and possibly even one day be able to have some true actual success, However we have spent so much time complicating the stick and allowed ourselves to get so far off track from what the actual root of what chemical dependency is and what it is we are or at least at one time were even seeking answers or a way to overcome amd well fix the issue , is that not really what we want ? Yet here we are , watching our friends , our brothers , sisters , moms ,dads, sons and daughters , our nieces and nefews our neighbour’s and the countless other lost hurting hopless desperate people ( myself included ) dying each and every day. And the best answer we have come up with after all the rush to slow , regulate , control and limit the prescribing of opiates , to now freely writing unheard of levels of the very same opiates that ” caused” ( in reality only added to a already present illicit established supply chain) as what a group of “I’d love to know who “, which has come up with the most asinine theory of a attempt to be the way of dealing with this issue. it is easier now then ever in history to obtain high doses of opiates at no cost with little to no questions asked for any person who wants quicker then a person can have a pizza delivered , Dilantin, Kadian (morphine) , oxycodone and multiple other opiates are being prescribed and dispensed armt levels never before seen in history and to make matters worse these opiates are now able to not only be prescribed by Dr’s, but nurses , pharmacists , amd even some addictions workers can prescribe these narcotics with about as much bandaid training and education on the subject as someone taking a food safe course. all this mind blowing “harm reduction ” has truly accomplished and everyone’s to afraid to say it has done ( yet another example of the sad reality of our politically correct new world where everyone’s too afraid to be a little brutally honest when needed to pull our heads out of our a$%es) any way as I was saying all this has done was allow people like myself to now have more free drugs , raising my tolerance which causes the addiction to progress faster and faster and the amount of opiates the body physically needs to increase more and more , when is anyone going to point out the obvious its staring in all our faces (some more then others) and our special group of people afraid to admit they really fd it up ,can we really think it’s a coincidence that there has been such a rapid increase in thefts and properly crimes that are directly proportionate to the rate to the flooding of pharmaceutical opiates into our same communities? am I the only one who can see this pattern of progression staring me in the face with warning signs flashing away day after day ? if an alcoholic who’s life has been decimated by whiskey that’s at the lowest point in his life came to you in tears of desperation asking you for for help do you think you would ever think the best thing you can do to help him is give him a bottle of whiskey and tel him he needs to come see you everyday now and you will give him a bottle everyday? of course not … so why do it to opiate addicts ? do you truly believe it’s to stem overdoses ? if it was it would only be suboxone and other medications that have opiate receptor blockers amd naloxone , not morphine , Dilantin etc which actually significantly increase the risk of overdosing when combining with street drugs. and there’s another elephant in the room . anyone care to take a wild guess on who much money is now being generated in the legal market which as we
know is taxed everytime it changes hands , which.previously was only being spent and generated in the black markets tax free . The same pharmaceutical companies that were in everyone’s sites and getting sued are now shattering sales revenues from the times everyone was pointing at them , “addiction drs” and Opiate Agonist Therapy pharmacies are making obscene amounts of money because all of ( 90pct or so) of all these medications are mandated to be daily dispensed which means exactly what you think there is a minimum billing everytime a dr talks to you wether it be 2 minutes or 20 minutes it is billed and the pharmacy bills everytime they dispense aswelk as do a witnessed ingestion of the medication , amd we are not talking the $4 or $5 to fill a prescription add at least a zero behind those numbers then multiply that by 30 days for the month then take that number by the 250-300 patients for the average OAT pharmacy , starting to see some reasons there may be groups of people that want to keep these programs going even of they know the success rate is a single digit percentage, believe it or not I have been personally approached on multiple times from ( ill leave un named ) Pharmacists who have offered me material items and even enough money to slightly shock me just to switch to they’re pharmacy, almost every pharmacy has some sort of customer retention thing going ive seen pharmacies giving out free products , money , all kinds of ethically questionable practices , and all of this continues to go on with everyone so detached from reality and so numbed to from the heartbreaking reality of what’s really happening . in the past two years that I’ve been involved daily in seeing this it has opened my eyes to seeing just how far off track we as a society have become , the first day that seeing another human being in a state of some sort of hurt or suffering as we ( i included when i say these things )walked by them no longer caused a emotional response of some sort inside was the first day things needed to change, unfortunately things have only gotten worse , to the point were I truly believe if we do not right the course or at least try to as a society try to rebuild a sense of community, we are only just starting to see how bad it’s going to get
J’aimerais faire partie de cette Action Collective. Merci ☺️