Baltimore’s Opioid Lawsuit Is Wrong Approach to Overdose Crisis

In The News | August 6, 2024

Maryland taxpayers should be assured that state leadership is working in their best interests and not those of entrepreneurial trial lawyers.

For decades, Baltimore has suffered from a scourge of illegal drugs, and it’s only gotten worse in recent years. The death toll wrought by the city’s heroin and crack epidemics pales in comparison with today’s rampant illegal drug abuse. From 2018 to 2022, Baltimore had nearly twice the rate of heroin and fentanyl fatalities of any similarly sized city, according to a report from the New York Times that found the city’s response to the crisis has been haphazard and ineffective.

Baltimore City Councilman Mark Conway, chair of the Public Safety and Government Operations Committee, was concerned enough to convene a series of public hearings to get to the bottom of the problem and discuss solutions that could help put a dent in Baltimore’s illegal drug trade and record overdose fatalities. His first hearing, scheduled for July 10, was canceled at the direction of the mayor’s office, and the remainder were postponed.

The reason? According to Mayor Brandon Scott, public hearings might be an inconvenience to Baltimore’s pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit against a group of corporate defendants in a prescription opioid trial scheduled for September.

The goal of that litigation is simple: use speculative and specious legal theories to convince a jury that chain pharmacies and distribution companies should foot the bill for fixing years of ineffective and misdirected city programs and absent public health leadership.

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