States Have Good Reason to Investigate Opioid Makers

Frustrated by the ever-escalating opioid crisis, and short of effective strategies to tackle it, states are moving against drugmakers. More than half have joined a bipartisan investigation into whether the companies are to blame for the epidemic, because they marketed their prescription painkillers too aggressively, downplaying the risk of addiction. Some have already filed lawsuits seeking damages.

There is good reason for states, and some cities, to take this tack. In the 1990s, opioid makers pushed their drugs forcefully, arguing that the risk of addiction was low. Doctors, who had once reserved opioids to treat end-of-life pain, were persuaded to prescribe them for acute and chronic pain of all sorts. Prescriptions skyrocketed and, along with them, the incidence of addiction and abuse. Now, some 2 million Americans are addicted, many of them have turned to heroin and other illegal drugs, and the number dying of overdose has reached into the tens of thousands.