A CITY IN FLORIDA IS GETTING READY TO SUE BIG PHARMA!

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The legal opioid epidemic is devastating many economies throughout the United States. In particular the South Florida city of Delray Beach.

Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein has solicited one of the country’s largest class-action law firms to investigate potential claims the city could make against them.

The San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd wrote a memo to city commissioners, saying it could use Florida’s consumer protection laws to argue drug manufacturers misled the public and omitted facts through their marketing.

It also argues it could go after drug wholesalers for failing to report suspicious orders of opioids, as required by federal law.

Glickstein has watched lawsuits “percolate” across the country and thinks now is the time to consider seeking damages, he told commissioners during a recent workshop.

In terms of damages, he cited the approximately $2,000 the city spends per overdose on personnel, equipment and medications, such as the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, more commonly known by the brand name Narcan.

“It’s part of just turning the screws and doing what we can to not see the next generation of addicts,” Glickstein said at the workshop.

Commissioners plan to listen to a presentation outlining potential claims from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, whose attorneys helped to secure a $7 billion settlement against Enron in 2008. The city has not yet confirmed a date for the presentation.

The analysis showed:

— Nearly 70 percent of overdoses in Delray Beach occur within walking distance, or a quarter-mile, of a sober home.

— Neighborhoods east of Interstate 95 have seen the highest concentrations: 809 overdoses in a region where 111 sober homes are situated.

— The western half of the city had far fewer overdoses (243) and listed sober homes (nine).

— Five percent of the overdoses happened inside sober homes themselves.

The Sun Sentinel explored the issue after Delray Beach became the first city in Florida to document the addresses of its sober homes, part of an effort to control the growing recovery industry in a city the New York Times recently labeled a “relapse capital.”

The Sun Sentinel obtained a list of 120 sober homes, or recovery residences, in Delray through a public records request and then compared it with the 1,052 drug overdoses recorded during the past 2½ years.

(See the addresses of sober homes identified by the city)

Overdoses shot up more than 250 percent from 2015 to 2016, rising from 195 to 690. Halfway through this year, police have recorded 412 overdoses, with 37 of those people dying.

Addicts shoot up in bathrooms, nod off in parks and call for help even on Atlantic Avenue, the heart of Delray’s entertainment district, according to city records and interviews with recovering addicts.

In October, for example, a 33-year-old man who had moved to Delray from Massachusetts for treatment was found dead from an overdose in a van parked outside a home south of Atlantic Avenue, police records show.

Delray Commissioner Jim Chard has watched sober homes proliferate over the past 15 years. He sees the white vans that take addicts to and from treatment and the lab vehicles that come by to pick up drug-test samples, he said.

“I am the only [home] in my block that isn’t a sober home,” said Chard, who, according to city records, lives within a quarter-mile of nine sober homes, in a neighborhood near South Federal Highway and Southeast Fourth Street. “I’m fortunate that [the sober homes] on the same block as my house are top-tier, first-class and really follow all of the rules.”

Nevertheless, Chard has found needles under his mailbox and once had to call an ambulance for a man who had overdosed in his front yard, he said.

He said residents have told him the concentration of sober homes leaves them concerned about the safety of their children and the quality of life in their neighborhoods.

City leaders and experts in the recovery industry say a number of factors lead sober homes to cluster in downtown Delray.

It makes sense for recovering addicts to want to live near downtown, Mayor Cary Glickstein said. It’s more pedestrian-friendly than other parts of the city, and many recovering drug users are employed in the downtown service industry as servers, cooks and bussers, he said.

“The irony is what makes Delray so attractive to live and work here are a lot of the same factors for why the recovery industry targeted Delray,” Glickstein said.

Police Chief Jeff Goldman said he thinks users are more likely to overdose near where they buy their drugs, rather than where they live.

It’s easier for dealers to drop off drugs to their clients near main thoroughfares — where dealers can come and go quickly, he said.

“Now, the dealers are the ones driving around trying to find users, because, unfortunately, they’re plentiful,” Goldman said.

When people in recovery want to get high, they do it away from where they live so people in the home don’t know, said Taylor Lopez, 25, a recovering addict.

“If you’re living in a legit halfway, you’re not looking to get caught in the halfway getting high,” she said. “What people are doing, they are walking out into the nearest spot, usually whatever closest bathroom you can usually find.”

Delray police records show Lopez has overdosed four times, although she said she actually has overdosed nine times since she moved to Delray Beach from her home state of New Jersey in 2015.

Lopez said she has lived in nearly a dozen sober homes since moving to Delray, most of which she considered good, or “like a family.”

Sober homes have spread in Delray since the housing market collapsed during the Great Recession, making it affordable for sober home operators to buy property.

Some homes and treatment centers, run by unscrupulous operators, have come under fire for luring people from other regions of the country with cash, gift cards and discounted rents, primarily to collect on their insurance policies, authorities say. In a federal fraud case, prosecutors on Wednesday accused one sober home and one treatment center of billing insurance companies $58 million over five years.

Until now, Delray has been unable to document the location of sober homes because federal law considered it discriminatory toward addicts. The Justice Department even warned the city in 2002 that it should not enact a law it was considering to ban sober homes.

A legal opinion last year from the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development opened the door to more regulation. It said a city can deny a request for a group home if it would impose an undue burden on local government or would fundamentally alter the city’s zoning. The proximity of group homes to one another could be considered, the agencies said.

In response, Delray conducted a zoning study in May that found the city has a “large and intense” amount of community housing, most of it sober homes. The report found 183 verified sober homes and 64 unverified group homes that the city thinks are sober homes. The city released the addresses of 120 homes, telling the Sun Sentinel it didn’t have the other addresses to provide.

The study’s author, Illinois-based attorney Daniel Lauber, said he had rarely seen such clusters in his 40-plus career examining zoning and fair housing.

Delray Beach commissioners initially approved a new law in early July that will require licensing of sober homes and other kinds of community residences. One key restriction: New community residences of four or more people should be at least 660 feet — about one city block — from one another. To move closer, they will need a permit.

“I think we are going to reduce the overdose rate, possibly significantly,” Mayor Glickstein said. “But I want to be clear, that the purpose of the ordinance is not to eliminate sober homes. The purpose of the ordinance is to ensure all community home operators are prioritizing the health safety and welfare of the occupants of those homes.”

Others say that the law could have a small positive effect but that drug users probably will continue to live in the community even if their sober home is shut down.

“If you shut down a sober home with eight people, they are not leaving Delray,” said Justin Kunzelman, director of business development at Ebb Tide Treatment Centers. “They are just going to another one.”

If the city chooses to move forward, it would be filed as single-plaintiff lawsuit, Glickstein said.

Communities in Illinois, New York and West Virginia have filed such lawsuits this year against drug manufacturers and wholesalers.

Among the communities that have won damages against drug manufacturers under similar circumstances:

— Kentucky received a $24 million settlement in 2015 from drug manufacturer Purdue in a lawsuit over misleading the public about the addiction rates tied to OxyContin.

— West Virginia received $16 million in 2016 to resolve allegations against a drug wholesaler that violated consumer protection and antitrust laws.

— New Hampshire received $2.9 million from a specialty pharmaceutical company in a lawsuit arguing it violated the state’s consumer protection laws.

In Palm Beach County, opioid overdose deaths more than tripled in the past five years, going from 143 in 2012 to 569 in 2016.

In Delray Beach, opioid-fueled overdoses have increased month over month since January totaling 314 — including 32 deaths, according to police records. Delray Beach Police responded to 88 overdoses in May, the latest data available.

“The issue is addiction,” Glickstein said. “If you don’t have addiction, you don’t have people selling drugs, you don’t have sober homes you don’t have insurance fraud, you don’t have patient brokering.”

Source:

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