Opioid epidemic: New Jersey sues Johnson & Johnson subsidiary over deceptive marketing

Lindy Washburn | NorthJersey

Show Caption Hide Caption AG targets big pharma in court for alleged opioid deception New Jersey Attorney General, Gurbir S. Grewal, announced that the state filed a lawsuit against Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Tuesday morning.

NEWARK — New Jersey targeted one of the state's most important industries Tuesday, filing suit against a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson for its role in fueling an accelerating opioid crisis that has claimed more than 2,600 lives in the state this year.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced a five-count lawsuit against Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. for a multi-year "scheme designed to deceive doctors and patients about two of the company’s opioid products."

The company's representatives blanketed the state with personal visits to health care providers while "knowing full well that its products carried high risk for addiction and abuse," Grewal said.

The lawsuit against Janssen Pharmaceuticals is the third filed by the state against an opioid manufacturer and the first against a pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey.

Janssen, with its main offices in Raritan Township in Hunterdon County, employs 40,000 people worldwide. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Most disturbing "is how much of the illegal conduct took place in our own backyard," Grewal said at a Newark news conference. "New Jersey's pharmaceutical industry may be the envy of the world, but we cannot turn a blind eye when a major corporation like Janssen violates our laws and threatens the lives of our residents."

Johnson & Johnson, the parent company, was not named in the lawsuit, but Grewal did not rule out including the company if it was found to be "aware of and involved in" the marketing campaign.

"We'll hold everyone accountable no matter who they are or where they operate," he said.

The suit alleges that Janssen contributed to a cultural shift among doctors and patients who came to regard opioid painkillers as appropriate for long-term use in the treatment of chronic pain, instead of as a treatment for acute pain and end-of-life care.

Janssen began marketing Nucynta in 2008 and and Nucynta ER in 2011, claiming that they were less addictive and safer than other prescription opioids, the attorney general said. It sold its U.S. rights to the drugs in 2015 for more than $1 billion.

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Of particular concern was the company's focus on expanding its market share by targeting the elderly and people who had not used opioids before, the lawsuit said.

It did this through sham organizations like the "Let's Talk Pain" Coalition and websites such as "PrescribeResponsibly.com" that conceal the company's role, the lawsuit claimed. Its pamphlets falsely debunked so-called opioid myths by saying "many studies show that opioids are rarely addictive when properly used for the management of chronic pain."

These claims had no scientific evidence to back them up, said Paul R. Rodriguez, acting director of the Division of Consumer Affairs.

Four out of five heroin addicts started with prescription painkillers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

New Jersey has had 2,690 deaths from opioid overdoses this year, as of Nov. 4, according to statistics kept by the Attorney General's Office. That already is 90 more deaths than in all of last year.

The state spent an estimated $12.5 million on claims for the two drugs submitted to the state’s employee insurance plans between 2010 and 2017, and an additional $800,000 on such claims to Medicaid and the state’s workers’ compensation program, the lawsuit said.

In one case highlighted, the state spent $48,000 on Janssen’s products for a single member of the state Employee Health Plan who received 125 prescriptions for Nucynta and Nucynta ER — a more than 2,700-day supply — during a one-year period. The patient’s health care provider had received hundreds of visits from a Janssen sales rep, the complaint said.

The state seeks payment to abate the problem Janssen’s deceptive marketing practice created, damages for false claims, civil penalties and a share of Janssen’s “ill-gotten gains.”

A redacted copy of the lawsuit was submitted for filing in state Superior Court in Mercer County on Tuesday. The company has claimed that the internal memos cited in the lawsuit would reveal proprietary information and trade secrets, but Grewal said he was calling upon them to make the unredacted version available to the public.

This is the third lawsuit the state has filed against a manufacturer of opioid pain medication. Last October, the administration of former Gov. Chris Christie sued Insys Therapeutics for broadly marketing its prescription opioid-fentanyl medication, Subsys, to a larger audience than its approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration allowed.

And in November, the state sued Purdue Pharma LP, the drug-making giant that produces Oxycontin.

Twelve other states have sued Janssen, the attorney general said.

Overdose deaths from opioids, including prescription opioids and heroin, have increased more than fivefold since 1999. Overdoses involving opioids killed more than 42,000 people in 2016, and 40 percent of those deaths were from prescription opioids.

Email: washburn@northjersey.com