Cleveland (USA) (AFP)

Billions of dollars are at stake: a resounding lawsuit will open Monday in Cleveland with several pharmaceutical giants on the bench of defendants, accused of having fueled the opiate crisis and its dozens of overdose deaths every day in the United States .

After Friday's failure of a last-minute conciliation attempt between major distributors and plaintiffs, this lawsuit could be the most dramatic and costly in the country since the one against the tobacco companies in the 1990s. At the time, it had been proven that industry giants had cynically concealed the dangers of smoking to make more profits.

Similarly, the complaint in this first federal opioid lawsuit states that producers and distributors were fully aware of the dangers of their painkillers, especially fentanyl, which was fifty times stronger than heroin and therefore powerfully addictive, with which they have flooded the market in the last 15 years. Ignoring the warning signs, they made huge profits.

The lawsuit in a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio (north), brings together 2,300 plaintiffs, states, counties, municipalities and Indian tribes. Opposite, some of the world's leading drug retailers: Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen and McKesson Corp., Israeli generic drug maker Teva, the Walgreen Boots Alliance pharmacy chain, and a small distributor in Ohio , Henry Schein.

- babies born addicted -

The Johnson & Johnson lab has negotiated a $ 20.4 million settlement agreement with two Ohio counties that are among the 2,300 plaintiffs. In August, the firm had already been ordered to pay $ 572 million to Oklahoma to offset the central government's costs of dealing with the opiate crisis.

Federal Judge Dan Polster lobbied for months to find an amicable settlement, hoping to avoid the long and painful trial that begins Monday. But the parties failed to reach an agreement, on a proposed basis of $ 48 billion, including $ 18 billion in cash, after a final meeting Friday between the representatives of the six companies accused and plaintiffs' lawyers.

Four states supported the proposed settlement agreement. But others, as well as many small complainants, were not satisfied with the total amount or the part distributed in cash in particular.

The four states wanted the money to be paid to them in their general budget, which they could then use as they wished. But the other states and municipalities want the funds to be paid to enable them to deal directly with the consequences of the crisis: to finance overburdened health and social security systems, allow families in debt because of the addiction of some of their members to get back to work, to care for babies born already addicted to painkillers ...

- 400,000 deaths -

"All the experts who have studied this problem believe that our country will face the fallout from this type of drug for years," Ohio attorney general Dave Yost said last week. "All the money recovered must be used to solve this problem and should not be used for anything else."

The amount of the deal would have been only part of the real cost of the opiate epidemic, which killed 400,000 people between 1999 and 2018 and still leaves more than 130 people dead each day. A study published last week estimated that the crisis cost at least $ 631 billion between 2015 and 2018. For this year alone, amounts of $ 172 to $ 214 billion are mentioned.

However, communities are often under intense financial pressure and do not want to spend years fighting in court: this gives the labs and distributors a first element to build on.

© 2019 AFP