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In a highly anticipated trial, lawyers for a West Virginia county and city told a judge Monday that the nation’s three largest drug distributors should be held liable for helping spur a public-health crisis by ignoring mounting evidence for years that prescription drugs were being diverted for illegal use. “We intend to prove the simple truth that the distributor defendants sold a mountain of opioid pills into our community, fueling a modern opioid epidemic,” said Paul Farrell, an attorney for Cabell County, in a 90-minute opening statement in federal court in the state capital. (Maher and Randazzo, 5/3)

A trial began Monday in a lawsuit filed in West Virginia accusing three drug distributors of fueling a local opioid epidemic with excessively large shipments of painkillers over several years. The city of Huntington and Cabell County filed the lawsuit against drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. The trial is in federal court in Charleston. A judge last month rejected the companies’ attempt to dismiss the case. Hundreds of similar lawsuits have been filed across the country. (5/4)

The three largest U.S. drug distributors, facing their first trial over claims that they fueled the opioid crisis, said responsibility for ballooning painkiller sales lies with doctors, drugmakers and regulators. AmerisourceBergen Corp (ABC.N), McKesson Corp (MCK.N) and Cardinal Health Inc (CAH.N) are defending themselves against a lawsuit brought by the city of Huntington and Cabell County in West Virginia. (Pierson, 5/3)

For months, members of the Sackler family that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, have portrayed their bid for immunity from future opioid lawsuits as a kind of fait accompli, a take-it-or-leave-it fix to a legal morass. In exchange for what amounts to a legal firewall for the Sacklers and their remaining empire, members of the family have offered to forfeit control of their bankrupt drug company and pay $4.2 billion from their private fortunes. Judge Robert Drain, who is presiding over the case in White Plains, N.Y., has suggested that such a deal may be desirable and achievable along these broad lines. (Mann, 5/3)

Recently-released data is painting a grim picture of the opioid epidemic that has gripped the United States — as the country is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans. "Some people are calling them twin pandemics that have collided," Harvard researcher Michael Barnett, Ph.D., said on CBSN Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 90,237 people in the U.S. died of opioid overdoses between October 2019 and September 2020. The figure is the highest ever recorded since the opioid crisis began in the late 1990s. (Elkind, 5/3)

Nationally, more than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the year before September of 2020 according to the CDC. In Ohio deaths spiked by 24 percent last year. Local leaders on the front lines of the opioid crisis say the pandemic was a second blow to a problem they tried so desperately to get under control. (Wheaton, 5/3)

A former Oklahoma doctor has been convicted of second-degree murder in the opioid overdose death of a patient, according to state Attorney General Mike Hunter. Former Midwest City Dr. Regan Nichols was convicted Friday on one of five counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of five patients between 2010 and 2013. (5/1)