Ohio gets $39M settlement from distributor of Suboxone

SANDUSKY — Ohio was awarded about $39 million of a $700 million multi-state settlement with a distributor of the opioid addiction treatment drug Suboxone.The settlement, with Reckitt Benckiser Group, stems from allegations the company improperly marketed Suboxone, which caused "false claims" to be submitted to government health care programs between 2010-2014, according to a release from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.Suboxone, with its active ingredient, buprenorphine, is a "powerful and addictive" opioid prescribed to recovering opioid addicts to reduce withdrawal symptoms as they get treatment, the release states."This firm downplayed the risks of Suboxone while marketing it to providers who sidestepped the rules for prescribing opioids," Yost said. "These are the sort of practices that landed us in this opioid crisis."According to Yost, a multi-state investigation by the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units found that the company allegedly:• Promoted Suboxone to doctors, the latter of whom prescribed the drug to patients for uses that were "unsafe, ineffective and medically unnecessary."• Made an inaccurate claim that a film version of the drug was less prone to abuse.• Made an inaccurate claim that they stopped manufacturing and selling Suboxone tablets.• Attempted to delay generic versions of the drug to "control drug pricing."Also assisting with the investigation and settlement negotiations were state attorneys general offices in California, Indiana, New York, Virginia and Washington.In this photo a man who recently got out of a rehab program for heroin addiction shows his prescription for Suboxone, a maintenance treatment for opioid dependence, on Feb. 5, 2014 in Burlington, Vermont.