Traverse City commissioners will consider joining their counterparts in Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties in suing drug manufacturers over costs related to the opioid epidemic as part of a federal class-action lawsuit.

Commissioners will meet at 7pm tonight (Monday) to vote on retaining a legal team comprised of local, state and national attorneys – including Traverse City-based Smith Johnson, Farmington Hills’ Bernstein Law Firm, and New York City’s Weitz & Luxenberg – in a lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. The lawsuit alleges that the targeted companies aggressively pushed the sale of highly addictive narcotic drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, methadone, codeine, morphine, and fentanyl to consumers despite knowing the dangers they posed. A skyrocketing number of national opioid prescriptions – which quadrupled between 1999 and 2013 – directly led to the heroin epidemic, with four out of five heroin users starting out on prescription opioids, according to the lawsuit.

Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties are already participants in the class-action case along with numerous other Michigan municipalities. Traverse City will consider joining under the same terms as those communities, paying no upfront legal fees but sharing 30 percent of the recovered damages with attorneys if the lawsuit is successful.

Ahead of tonight’s vote, city commissioners met last week with Grand Traverse County Deputy Civil Counsel Christopher Forsyth to learn more about the lawsuit as well as the impact the opioid epidemic has had locally. There have been 31 overdose deaths in Grand Traverse County in the past three years, according to Forsyth – with opioids responsible for more deaths locally than car accidents and the same number of deaths as caused by firearms. Data provided to commissioners by Weitz & Luxenberg show that for every 10,000 residents of Grand Traverse County in 2015, 10,698 opioid prescriptions were written – with prescriptions increasing 33 percent since 2009. Local enforcement agencies continue to receive “several calls weekly for overdose situations,” according to Forsyth.

“We’ve learned that one, all opioids are addictive, and they do not discriminate,” Forsyth said. “They don’t discriminate between the young and the old, the rich and the poor. They affect everybody. They will eventually lead to heroin. Once that (prescription) runs out, once you can’t doctor shop anymore, you will turn to the black market – and that will lead you to heroin.”

The lawsuit seeks to recover costs for local communities caused by the opioid epidemic, including increased costs for emergency room visits, treatment programs, addiction and mental health counseling, law enforcement response and training, court cases, and child protective services. Each community participating in the lawsuit will provide its own estimate of damages. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioid misuse costs $78.5 billion annually in healthcare costs, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice intervention. The lawsuit alleges pharmaceutical companies are responsible for bearing those costs because starting in the late 1990s, they falsely “reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates,” according to Weitz & Luxenberg. “This subsequently led to widespread diversion and misuse of these medications…(and) opioid overdose rates began to increase.”

The law firm provided as one example Purdue Pharma’s introduction of OxyContin in 1996; an aggressive marketing campaign for the drug caused its sales to swell from $48 million in 1996 to almost $1.1 billion in 2000, making it a leading drug of abuse in the country by 2004. OxyContin sales reps were trained to promote the drug in the “non-malignant pain market,” to encourage primary-care physicians to prescribe the drug liberally, and to state the risk of addiction for patients was less than one percent, according to attorneys. Such strategies were common practice across the industry for numerous addictive opioids, with patients prescribed potent medications for symptoms as common as headaches, arthritis, and back pain, the lawsuit alleges.

During commissioners’ meeting with Forsyth, numerous residents spoke during public comment about the opioid epidemic’s effect on their lives. Traverse City East Middle School teacher Jody Mackey told commissioners three of her former students died from opioid overdoses in 2017, and said she personally intervened to prevent medical practitioners from prescribing opioids to her children following a childbirth and dental procedure, respectively. “My concern is that I’m still seeing even in my own life evidence that we’re still way overprescribing in this community,” she said. “If we don’t stop prescribing this amount...we’re getting people that have no other reason to become a drug addict other than they have a health incident, we’re getting people hooked on drugs. And it’s kids, too.”

Several of Mackey’s digital media students produced a documentary on the local epidemic called Predator & Prey: Opioids’ Savage Effect On Our Community. The 18-minute film will screen for free at the State Theatre on Sunday, April 15 at 11:30am, followed by a panel of speakers who will discuss addiction. Mackey encouraged city commissioners to see and promote the film, as well as to use their position in the city “to leverage some talks with the medical community” about opioids and the rate at which they are prescribed locally.

Commissioners affirmed their interest in exploring options beyond joining the federal class-action lawsuit to address opioid addiction in the community. The board discussed the possibility of reinstating a drug interdiction officer position within the Traverse City Police Department; such an officer would specialize in illegal drug interception and reach out to local hotels and other locations where drugs commonly appear to train staff on how to recognize drug activity. Commissioner Michele Howard also said she wanted to see the city play a more proactive role in the Grand Traverse Drug Free Coalition and ramp up educational programming and campaigns, such as promoting Good Samaritan laws that allow individuals to report drug overdoses without risk of being arrested. Howard said joining with other municipalities in a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies was “a great idea,” but emphasized the city needed a multi-pronged approach to address the opioid epidemic.

“I think we have a role that we can play to take action, and maybe some of that would be through budgetary means,” Howard said. “I’d like to see us get involved a step deeper.”