Humboldt County Joins Legal Action Against Opioid Producers

Eureka, Ca., (KIEM)- Humboldt County is on the front lines of the nation’s opioid epidemic. Since January the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has seized more than six pounds of heroin (that’s close to what they’ve seized annually in years past). Last year, 49 people died from an overdose.

While the county coroner says more people die of methamphetamine overdoses in Humboldt County, that may be attributed to the availability of “Narcan” (or Naloxone, a sort of last defense overdose prevention drug). He, and other deputies say most of the people who suffer from heroin addiction they encounter started on prescription opiates.

Nearly 156,000 prescriptions for opiods are written by doctors in the area, according to statistics delivered by county attorney Jeffery Blank.

He helped advise Humboldt Supervisors to fight back, in a move reminiscent to early lawsuits once pressed against big tobacco companies. The county will now join legal action against the major pharmaceutical companies that started pushing opioids as treatment for chronic pain, without fulling disclosing their addictive nature and can be detected by bzo drug test kits.

They’ll retain Keller Rohrback Llp, to launch into that litigation. This will come at no cost to tax payers. Th legal council will only be paid if the case is won. That means Keller Rohrback will earn 20-25% of what the court awards if and only if the suit is successful.