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by Geoff Mulvihill | AP July 27 at 18h29
A federal judge ruled that state and local governments can not publish federal government data on the distribution of prescription opioids, a blow to news agencies.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency provides information to state and local governments to use in their lawsuits against companies that manufacture, distribute and sell drugs. Sharing data, even with them, accompanied a long list of conditions, including the fact that it could only be used for law enforcement and litigation.
Dan Polster, a judge in Cleveland, oversees more than 800 lawsuits in federal court. decided on Thursday that the data can not be made public. He said that it would reveal trade secrets and "eviscerate" the terms under which the information was shared.
The federal government collects information on the distribution of all controlled hazardous substances.
The judge has scheduled the first trials in the case will begin in March 2019. He has meanwhile pushed for a national settlement.
The drug industry and government entities, including states that have not filed lawsuits, have been negotiating for months even though cases are being prepared for trial. The pharmaceutical industry is asking the judge to dismiss the lawsuits, arguing that local governments do not have the legal capacity to take legal action and dispute that they caused the crisis, involving federally approved drugs prescribed by physicians.
Organizations, including the Associated Press, had requested the data through requests for public records sent to local governments.
The Washington Post and HD Media, owner of West Virginia's Charleston Gazette-Mail, went to court. "We are disappointed, but we remain committed to fighting for cases that highlight the causes and costs of the opioid epidemic. The editor of Gazette-Mail, Greg Moore, said Friday in an email
that a judge from West Virginia made some public data available in 2016. The Gazette-Mail used it to report that $ 780 million pills flowed into the state, which barely counts 1.8 million people, over a six-year period. During this period, more than 1,700 West Virginians died from opioid overdoses, a clbad of drugs including prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin and illicit drugs like heroin and fentanyl manufactured illegally
. The drugs, Paul Farrell, said the data would also show the public which pharmacies were selling huge amounts of drugs.
Karen Lefton, a Washington Post lawyer, said "keeping secret secrets does not help the families of the victims."
Opioids killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Prevention of the United States.
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