Five chief manufacturers of opioid class drugs – Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, and Cephalon, Johnson and Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Allergan have been named in a number of lawsuits.

Opioid narcotics are a class of drugs which work by binding to the opioid receptors to block or reduce the feeling of pain. Hydrocodone, oxycodone, tramadol, morphine, fentanyl, heroin, and methadone are some of the common names you might have heard in the medical use of the drugs. They have been prescribed to treat chronic pain for the last decades but the use has been huge over the last several years. Since 1999, the number of prescription painkillers been sold in America has almost quadrupled and so is opioid addiction.

Researchers have also note that many of those heroin deaths themselves can be easily traced back to the dependence of prescription opioids.

The result is a public health epidemic and according to The New York Times the issue is more severe than the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. As a result of this epidemic, the opioid addicts and areas which have been ravaged by the addicted are now filing opioid painkiller lawsuits against drug wholesalers, pharmacists and physicians as well. The outcome of all these are opioid overdose.

What were originally intended to treat serious, acute pain like of those victims of surgeries or sufferers of long-term pain increasingly became a thing of concern for the narcotics. The lawsuit argues that from 2007 to 2012, the defendants supplied pills for over 1.8 million people, generating revenues of over $17 billion. The victims now speak up for the unnecessary dangerous effects they have been exposed to.

The experts of the Bramzon Law Firm PLLC can be reached at 855-982-1787 or Opioidlegal.com. The team will help to file for the compensation of the victims who have been wrongly affected by the use of the prescription opioids. Don’t think the addiction as entirely your fault. It is important to make your voice heard and that people should understand how manipulative the manufacturers have been to play with the safety of public health.