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An anti-pain marketed by the Johnson & Johnson laboratory, convicted by the Oklahoma court. Alastair Pike / AFP

On Monday, August 26th, the Johnson & Johnson lab was ordered to pay $ 572 million to the state of Oklahoma for its responsibility for the opiate crisis that causes tens of thousands of overdose deaths every year in the United States. .

With our correspondent in San Francisco, Eric de Salve

In its decision, the Norman Oklahoma court estimates that Johnson & Johnson has been cheating doctors for years with aggressive marketing campaigns to urge them to mass -enforce their fentanyl-based pain medication while minimizing their use. dependence risks.

This highly addictive product is now at the heart of the opioid crisis in the United States. After two months of trial , the pharmaceutical group is therefore held responsible for this public health crisis.

A dependency crisis that, according to US authorities, has caused nearly 6,000 overdose deaths in Oklahoma alone and causes more than 150 deaths per day on average in the United States. This Midwest state, particularly ravaged by this epidemic, filed a lawsuit in 2017 against several pharmaceutical companies including Johnson and Johnson.

His half-billion dollar sentence is intended to fund drug programs, but the group immediately appealed. Some 40 other US states have already initiated similar procedures.

In total more than 2000 complaints are in progress nationwide. The next trial is scheduled to begin in October in Ohio, while in the United States, these proceedings are already compared to the lawsuits against the tobacco industry in the 1990s.