This could be the year of reckoning for pharmaceutical companies over their sales and promotion of opiate painkillers, including a Rhode Island-based drug manufacturer – consisting of Rhodes Pharmaceuticals L.P. and Rhodes Technologies Inc., collectively referred to as Rhodes.
Many lawsuits have been filed by state and local authorities nationwide, claiming a number of pharma companies fueled the opioid epidemic through deceptive sales and marketing tactics that led to excessive prescribing, inflated government medical expenses and public suffering.
In Rhode Island, Providence filed suit in June, followed by the state attorney general’s office in November, which added that to its knowledge, no other local towns or cities have filed suit against the companies and their owners.
Among other defendants, the attorney general’s suit names Purdue Pharma, Rhodes and Richard Sackler. Owned by the Sackler family, Purdue is best known as the maker of the opioid OxyContin. But what has been lesser known is its connection to Rhode Island.
According to the attorney general’s suit, Rhodes Pharmaceuticals and Rhodes Technologies are based in Coventry. And Rhodes Technologies is a subsidiary of Purdue Pharma, based in Stamford, Conn. Rhodes manufactures and distributes generic opioids. It also makes the active ingredient in Purdue’s OxyContin and buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction. Rhodes Pharmaceuticals has a limited partner, Coventry Technologies, also based in Stamford, and is a general partner of Purdue. Together, Rhodes and Purdue accounted for 14.4 million opioid prescriptions nationwide in 2016, the suit states.
Richard Sackler is a board member of Purdue and Rhodes Technologies, has an ownership interest in both companies, and has issued directives for the sales and promotion of its opioids, the suit states.
Rhodes Pharmaceuticals was set up in 2007, four months after Purdue pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that it mis-marketed OxyContin over the previous decade, the Financial Times reported.
Purdue reportedly is weighing a bankruptcy filing, which likely would shift the claims against it into bankruptcy court.
David Logan, former dean of Roger Williams University’s School of Law, said the litigation reminds him of the multibillion-dollar settlements against the tobacco industry a generation ago. In 2013 Rhode Island collected more than $46 million as part of the settlement, but the final amount has not yet been determined. Since then, Logan said, some states have been criticized for using the money for purposes outside the intended scope of the settlements.
How an opioid settlement would be used in Rhode Island “would be a matter of political will and how tightly a settlement is written,” Logan said.
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Blake@PBN.com.
