NJ investigating drug-makers in multi-state painkiller probe

As Gov. Chris Christie openly pushes his agenda focusing on treatment and prevention of opioid abuse, his administration is quietly expanding the effort to the legal front.

The state Attorney General's office has joined a multi-state investigation of the pharmaceutical industry for its potential role in the opioid crisis that has swept the state and the country, Gannett NJ has learned. Separately, the office has issued a subpoena to Johnson & Johnson, the New Brunswick-based pharmaceutical company, related to the marketing practices of opioids by subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

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The multiple investigations by the attorney general's office is among the latest steps in a growing national legal effort to seek a level of accountability in what has become one of the deadliest public health crises in modern American history. Drug overdoses, fueled mostly by heroin and other opioids, killed more than 52,000 people in 2015, more than the roughly 43,000 who died at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1995. And the country appears on track to have exceeded 59,000 drug-related deaths last year, according to preliminary data analyzed by The New York Times.

Attorney General Christopher Porrino said that while the epidemic has many causes, recent studies show that eight in 10 heroin addicts became addicted through the use of opioid pain medication "marketed and sold by pharmaceutical companies."

"New Jersey’s involvement in this multi-state effort is as an essential step towards gaining a complete picture of the roots of this epidemic, and in determining whether and to what extent unlawful conduct by drug makers has been a contributor," Porrino said.

A bipartisan group of attorneys general announced last week that they are investigating the marketing and sales of opioids by drug manufacturers, but the group did not identify its targets. It is not clear when New Jersey joined the investigation, or why it did not announce its involvement.

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The multi-state investigation came about two weeks after the Ohio attorney general, Mike DeWine, sued five drug-makers for allegedly misrepresenting the risk of opioids. Drug-makers, including Johnson & Johnson, are facing lawsuits in counties and cities across the country, including in California, Chicago, Mississippi and New York, according to Reuters, which first reported the subpoena in New Jersey.

On Wednesday, Missouri became the third state to sue drug manufacturers, accusing it of carrying out "a complex, multi-year campaign in which they deliberately misrepresented the addictive risks of opioids," attorney general Josh Hawley said. That lawsuit includes Janssen, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Janssen said that it acted appropriately in the Missouri case. The company also confirmed in a statement to The Record that it had been subpoenaed by New Jersey.

"In March we received a subpoena from the NJ Attorney General Division of Consumer Affairs and we’re cooperating with their request," spokeswoman Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for Janssen, said in an email. "We believe we have acted appropriately, responsibly and in the best interests of patients regarding our opioid pain medications, which are FDA-approved and carry FDA-mandated warnings about the known risks of the medications on every product label."

Christie, who appointed Porrino as attorney general, has dedicated his final year in office to fighting the opioid epidemic. He has waged his campaign on multiple fronts: signing legislation to limit painkiller prescriptions, television and radio advertising and by leading a national panel named by President Donald Trump that is charged with making recommendations to curb the abuse. He's also locked in a battle with the state's largest health insurer over health coverage for the poor and uninsured. But he has been silent on whether the state would take legal action against the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs.

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The state investigations and legal action may foretell a broader, long-term approach as the nation reckons with the opioid crisis, much in the way of the "Big Tobacco" legal dispute, said Brian Sheppard, a law professor at Seton Hall University. In 1998, attorneys general in 46 states reached an agreement with the four major tobacco companies to secure billions of dollars over many years over the marketing and sales of cigarettes.

The recent cases from Ohio and other states “tend to focus on the way these products are advertised, so sort of a false advertising theory," Sheppard said.

“This isn’t exactly the same, of course. We don’t see opioid manufacturers making brazen attempts to use cartoon characters to entice children to take opioids. But we do see some history here of direct advertising and advertising also to doctors, particularly about the effectiveness of the drug with respect to duration and some apparent misinformation potentially about that.”

Nicholas Pugliese contributed to this report.