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Litigation against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is intensifying as six more U.S. states on Tuesday announced lawsuits, accusing the company of fueling a national opioid epidemic by deceptively marketing its prescription painkillers to generate billions of dollars in sales. U.S. state attorneys general of Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee also said Purdue Pharma violated state consumer protection laws by falsely denying or downplaying the addiction risk while overstating the benefits of opioids. "It's time the defendants pay for the pain and the destruction they've caused," Florida State Attorney General Pam Bondi told a press conference. (5/15)

Florida, Texas and four other states became the latest to file lawsuits against Purdue Pharma LP and other opioid painkiller makers, alleging they fueled an addiction crisis by misrepresenting the risks of their drugs. Florida and Texas, the most populous states yet to pursue litigation, join more than a dozen other states and hundreds of counties, including Ohio, Alabama, Missouri, New Hampshire and Washington, to sue opioid painkiller makers. Many states and counties have also sued painkiller distributors. (Whalen and Randazzo, 5/15)

In an announcement Tuesday afternoon, [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton, a Republican, flanked by several assistant attorney generals, said the state is taking the drug maker to court for misrepresenting the risks of opioid addiction. “We must make those who have caused the opioid crisis feel the pain that they have inflicted on our community,” Paxton said. (Evans, 5/15)

Paxton said his office filed suit in Travis County because a state law known as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act can provide powerful leverage — the ability to get an injunction barring Purdue from continued misrepresentation of its pain killers and penalties of up to $20,000 per violation. (Lindell, 5/15)

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery and Florida’s Pam Bondi on Tuesday accused executives of Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors of fueling a public-health crisis by falsely claiming that the synthetic pain medicine wasn’t addictive. They joined more than 20 other states that have sued companies including Purdue, Johnson & Johnson and McKesson Corp. over the products. It’s a twist for Slatery and Bondi, who have been leading settlement negotiations sponsored by a coalition of attorneys general and who’ve deferred from suing makers and distributors of the drug until now. Four other states -- North Carolina, Texas, Nevada and North Dakota -- also filed opioid suits Tuesday. They were also part of the talks. (Feeley, 5/15)

Fentanyl, a potent opioid already responsible for thousands of deaths nationwide, is increasingly showing up in drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine in California, officials say. The white powder, a lethal substance 50 times stronger than heroin, is sometimes mixed into other opioids to produce a stronger high. Now its presence in non-opioids has public health experts worried that California may be staring down a new dimension of the deadly epidemic. (Karlamangla, 5/15)

Kaiser Health News: Opioid Overdose Antidote Naloxone And Narcan Can Be Hard To Get

A few months ago, Kourtnaye Sturgeon helped save someone’s life. She was driving in downtown Indianapolis when she saw people gathered around a car on the side of the road. Sturgeon pulled over, and a man told her there was nothing she could do: Two men had overdosed on opioids and appeared to be dead. “I kind of recall saying, ‘No man, I’ve got Narcan,'” she said, referring to a brand-name version of the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone. “Which sounds so silly, but I’m pretty sure that’s what came out.” (Harper, 5/16)