He started a one million dollar lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson in the United States due to the opioid crisis

Of the three pharmaceutical companies initially charged in this state, Johnson & Johnson, better known for his baby talcum powder, which, for the treatment of pain sold by its subsidiary Janssen, is the only one who has not reached an amicable agreement with the prosecutor of Oklahoma to avoid a trial.

The Purdue Pharma laboratory, become the number one enemy of the opioid crisis for the manufacture of the drug Oxycontin, reached an amicable agreement in March with the state authorities who agreed to pay $ 270 million.

The Israeli lab Teva did the same this weekend and agreed to pay $ 85 million.

Johnson & Johnson wants to show that it has not deliberately minimized the risks of addiction to its opioid medicationsor under pressure to be prescribed excessively, is accused of having contributed to the death of about 400,000 people by overdose in the United States for 20 years.

The laboratory lawyer, Larry OttawayHe said Tuesday in his opening plea that if Johnson & Johnson said in the late '90s that opiates were "seldom addictive", it was because the US drug agency, the FDA, had approved this badessment.

But Oklahoma's Attorney General Mike Hunter has accused the lab of acting "on greed," presenting opioids "cynically and deceptively" as a "magic drug" against pain.

A deputy prosecutor estimated at $ 870 million a year the amount that the Midwestern state should spend to end the health crisis.

This lawsuit, often compared to those against tobacco companies and which resulted in a broad agreement of more than $ 200,000 million in 1998, should also set a precedent: nearly 2,000 prosecutions were federally initiated, supervised by an Ohio judge and hundreds of states, including New York and Mbadachusetts.

The hearings, which take place without a jury before state judge Thad Balkman, are expected to last about two months.