This week on Minnesota Native News, we hear from the Prairie Island Indian Community, which has joined other Minnesota Dakota tribes in a lawsuit against the opioid industry. It’s a historic fight that extends far beyond Minnesota.
Transcript
As the disastrous effects of opioid addiction are becoming more widely known, so is the awareness that this is an issue that disproportionately affects the native community.
According to the Centers For Disease Control, as drug overdose deaths increased more than 200 percent between 1999 and 2015, the death rate for Native Americans and Native Alaskans rose by more than 500 percent.
Also, in 2012 the CDC reported that 1 out of 10 natives over the age of 12 used prescription pain medicine, which includes opioids, for nonprescription purposes. That’s compared to 1 in 20 whites and 1 in 30 African Americans.
Now… a new lawsuit claims that it’s the pharmaceutical industry that is the big cause of the opioid epidemic in native country.
BUCK: “It's hit us with force. Generations of our tribe’s future are mired in addiction.
That’s Shelly Buck, the president of the Prairie Island Indian Community, a Mdewakanton Dakota tribe in southeastern Minnesota.
BUCK: “The wreckage that leaves on our family unit is significant. We have babies being born addicted to opiates at a higher rate than ever, and many of our parents can't care for those children.”
Prairie Island and three other Dakota tribes in Minnesota have collectively filed complaints in a multi-district litigation now underway in United States District Court.
The complaint alleges that pharmaceutical companies have improperly and fraudulently downplayed the risk of addiction to opioids.
BUCK: “I mean we had no clue. When you go to the doctor, you have to have surgery. Anything that causes pain, the first thing that they want to do is prescribe pain medicine”
Timothy Purdon, is with the law firm, Robins Kaplan, which represents 15 tribes across six states.
Purdon: “We represent prairie island along with the other three Minnesota Dakota tribes, the shakopee tribe, the Upper Sioux, lower Sioux and prairie island.”
Purdon says the lawsuit accuses pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue Pharma, Johnson and Johnson, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and others of knowingly causing harm. It also includes what he calls, the middlemen.
Purdon: “We alleged that the middlemen, the, uh, the distributors of the, the opioids, um, that they also acted illegally, that they improperly flooded certain parts of the country with opioid pills.”
Distributor companies include Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp.
Prairie Island President Shelley Buck and Attorney Tim Purdon say this flooding of opioids across communities, has drain d tribal community resources. Here’s Shelley Buck.
BUCK: This is just unlike anything we've seen and something has to be done.
The impact is felt locally in…. health services, police departments, tribal courts.
BUCK: “Treatment costs and medical expenses continue to increase and 100 percent of that is born by the tribe through our self-funded medical insurance program.”
And Nationally… as Tribes across the country are feeling the effects of opioid addiction and are getting involved. There are currently two of what Attorney Purdon calls, test cases, right now.
BUCK: “These cases have been consolidate, as I said, in front of a single judge in Ohio. And that judge has set up a tribal track for the litigation. And as such he's picked two test cases. The muskogee creek tribe in Oklahoma and the blackfeet tribe in Montana have been identified by the court as test cases.”
These test cases will serve as examples and help the parties on both sides understand the strengths and weaknesses of the claims.
And… in a move that Attorney Purdon calls “historic”, hundreds of federally recognized tribes recently signed an amicus Brief in support of the test cases. 448 of them.
Purdon: “There's only a little over 570 federally recognized tribes in the whole country. And you had 448 for coming in to join and support the litigation brought by Blackfeet and Muskogee creek. That's historic.”
A decision in those test cases, according to Purdon, should be decided before the end of the year.
Pharmaceutical companies and distributors deny acting improperly.
Prairie Island Indian Community President Shelley Buck says the aim (or end goal) of all of these lawsuits is to get resources needed to build treatment programs in communities to help turn the epidemic around.
BUCK: “That is our goal with the tribe debt of three tribes is the, to build a facility for our, for communities where we'll always have beds right now we run into problems where we can't find beds available when we need them. We'll have beds available for our people and it'll be a culturally based healing versus just what the state requires.”
I’m Cole Premo.