The City of Warren continues to be the first city in the area to file this suit. Other cities such as Sterling Heights and Harrison Township will also be filing this suit today. I first began a war against the drug epidemic dating back to 2011, including aggressive raids against drug dealers. Since then, we have raided drug houses in other cities including Detroit. We have issued Narcan to all police and fire. We have seen drug overdoses spike from approximately 8 overdoses to 32 overdoses in one year.
That was a dramatic increase of 400%. Warren is currently leading a Macomb County Drug Task Force against the drug cartel in this area. Now we are taking on the pharmaceutical companies.
While these Big Pharma companies have paid millions in fines for their misdeeds with marketing and pricing drugs, it is small in comparison to the billions they have made yearly.
For example, McKesson agreed to a record $150,000,000 fine with the Justice Department and at the same time gave a retirement package of $159,000,000 to their chief executive John Hammergren in 2013.
The retirement alone for one executive is more than the biggest fine they’ve had to pay. Nearly 1/4 of a million Americans have paid with their lives because of marketing with Big Pharma. In the City of Warren, in just the past few years drug overdoses are 158 deaths!
Related to this issue of drug overdoses, the City of Warren Police Department was dispatched to the Warren Pain Center for 156 police runs from 2012-2018, and the overdose calls in the city at that time period is listed as 1121.This cost to the city would be at least HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars.
This is just one cost not including Fire, EMS, and other such costs. This also does not include crimes related to drug addicts. This includes breaking and entering, car thefts and other such problems.
The bottom line is this lawsuit that the City of Warren has initiated is about making Big Pharma pay for the damage they have done to average Americans and to society as a whole.