A Quebec Superior Court judge has authorized a class-action suit that alleges 16 pharmaceutical companies misled people regarding the safety and addictive nature of opioids.
People who have been diagnosed with opioid use disorder in Quebec since 1996 may be covered by the lawsuit.
Respondent Purdue Pharma makes Dilaudid, the brand name of the most commonly prescribed safer supply opioid, hydromorphone. Respondent Teva Canada Limited is the Canadian arm of Teva Pharmaceuticals, which makes fentanyl buccal tablets prescribed as safer supply. Respondent Sandoz Canada Inc. makes safer supply fentanyl patches and sufentanil, which is up to 10 times stronger than fentanyl.
The Epoch Times identified the makers of safer supply drugs
in a report earlier this year by cross-referencing information available online from Health Canada and British Columbia’s health ministry. Neither agency directly provided the company names when asked who makes safer supply drugs.
None of the three companies responded as of publication to Epoch Times inquiries regarding the recent lawsuit and the controversy around safer supply. The safer supply programs aim to give addicts pharmaceutical opioids to prevent overdoses caused by more dangerous street drugs. But the
problem of diversion—people selling their prescription drugs on the black market—has plagued the programs.
“The federal government is literally flooding Canadian streets and the campuses of Canadian schools with cheap, powerful, and addictive opioids,” Aaron Gunn, who made a documentary about safer supply called “Canada Is Dying,”
told The Epoch Times last year. Mr. Gunn is now a federal Conservative candidate.
He compared the flood of safer supply opioids to that of OxyContin when it started the opioid addiction crisis more than a decade ago. “Except this time, we’re doing it with even more powerful drugs,” he said.
Millions in Damages
The applicant in the Quebec class-action case is Quebec resident Jean-François Bourassa, who sustained injuries when he fell from a roof in 2005. He owned a roofing company at the time. He says he was prescribed various opioids, including hydromorphone, without being informed of the risks.The lawsuit outlines how he used opioids for years and was admitted into an Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) program at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal in 2017. After he was discharged, he was prescribed hydromorphone in lower dosages. He was re-admitted to the OUD program in 2018.
He was again prescribed hydromorphone in 2021 to relieve pain associated with shingles, and his family doctor continued to prescribe it to him thereafter.
The Quebec Superior Court
authorization, dated April 10, gives an overview of the allegations. It says the applicant argues the companies sold prescription opioid drugs “without sufficient warnings as to the risks and the serious and potentially fatal dangers involved in the use thereof.”
The suit alleges “the marketing of the opioids was intentionally done through deliberate misrepresentations to the effect that the opioid medications were less addictive than they knew them to actually be.”
Some of the respondents say Mr. Bourassa did not demonstrate that he consumed opioids made by them specifically.
“They put the question as to why Applicant has not limited his proceeding to only those respondents whose medication he actually consumed rather than disproportionately targeting what is tantamount to the entire opioid-drug-manufacturing industry,” according to the case information outlined in the authorization document.
The lawsuit calls for each defendant to pay $25 million in punitive damages and $30,000 to each member of the suit.
It excludes people who used OxyContin and OxyNEO who would have already been covered by a previous Canada-wide
class-action suit. Purdue Pharma paid $20 million to settle that case in 2017. Purdue also
paid $150 million in 2022 to settle a class-action suit brought against it by British Columbia on behalf of all Canadian governments. The 2022 suit sought to recover health-care costs related to opioid addiction.
“Many Quebecers have been victimized by the rampant prescription of opioids as a result of the misleading and aggressive sales and marketing efforts of numerous pharmaceutical companies,” says a
release by Fishman Flanz Meland Paquin, one of the law firms handling the suit.
The other law firm involved is Trudel Johnston and Lespérance, which has on its website
information for anyone who thinks they may be covered by the suit.
