CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Seven more municipalities across West Virginia are joining in on lawsuits against several drug distributors accused of fueling the local opioid epidemic by shipping far too many painkillers there.
WSAZ-TV (https://bit.ly/2lBatWf ) reports that five of the plaintiffs are in the Tri-State and Kanawha Valley area: the cities of Logan, Montgomery, Summersville, the town of Wayne and Nicholas County.
The lawsuits say AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. flooded the state with highly addictive pain pills.
The state has already recently settled multiple similar lawsuits against wholesalers for a total of about $47 million. The companies have denied any wrongdoing.
A Charleston Gazette-Mail investigation found drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in six years, a period when 1,728 people statewide fatally overdosed.
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Information from: WSAZ-TV, https://www.wsaz.com
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