US corporations push to neuter laws used to hold opioid firms accountable
Rightwing pressure group Alec seeks to limit public nuisance laws used to take on big business from tobacco to climate crisis
Opioid manufacturers and other major corporations are pushing legislation to strip away state laws that have been used to sue the pharmaceutical industry for hundreds of millions of dollars over the worst drug epidemic in US history.
The influential rightwing pressure group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which is funded by large US companies, is behind model legislation to greatly restrict lawsuits under state public nuisance laws which are increasingly widely used to hold big business to account.
Public nuisance legislation was central to state lawsuits against the tobacco industry over the damage caused to public health by smoking in the 1990s. The laws are also at the heart of some litigation against fossil fuel companies over the climate crisis and emerging lawsuits against companies that failed to adequately protect workers from Covid.
They have also resulted in drug manufacturers and distributors paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to cities and other authorities for their part in the opioid crisis that has claimed about 800,000 lives. On Friday, the advertising company Publicis Health agreed a $350m settlement with US states that sued the company under public nuisance laws for promoting the high-strength painkiller that kicked off the opioid epidemic, OxyContin, to doctors with false claims about its safety.
But in an attempt to limit public authorities and others harmed by the actions of big business from seeking redress, corporations are using groups such as Alec and the US chamber of commerce to push state legislatures to pass laws to curb similar legal actions in the future.
