Here & Now

Marathon County Joins Opioid Suit

Frederica Freyberg:

More and more Wisconsin counties are signing on to a potential lawsuit against opioid drug manufacturers. This week, three more counties approved suing to recover costs related to the prescription drug epidemic, including Marathon County. It’s among at least six counties so far voting in favor, with more board of supervisors votes to come. The Wisconsin Counties Association hopes to see nearly all counties sign on to sue. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports that 1,031 people died in 2016 of opioid overdoses, up from 872 the prior year. Marathon County Supervisor and former pharmacy technician Sara Guild joins us from Wisconsin Rapids. Thank you very much for doing so.

Sara Guild:

I’m honored to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Frederica Freyberg:

Your board of supervisors voted 30 to 3 to sign on to a lawsuit. Why did you vote in favor?

Sara Guild:

I vote in favor in large part because of my pharmaceutical history. As you mentioned, I was a pharmacy technician. I actually trained at Mayo Clinic back in the early 2000s. I worked for them for a few years and then later I worked for the Oneida Tribes Clinic. During that time I saw firsthand what was happening with trying to get new drugs in front of our patients. And from what I'm learning in hindsight, a lot of the information that our doctors were being told during that time frame was skewed. It wasn’t accurate. It wasn’t upfront and honest about what the actual risks were for patients. They weren’t exploring and being given the opportunity to explore alternative therapies. Because of that, patients were being directed to drugs they didn’t realize had such painful consequences. And now here we are, a decade plus later, facing this horrible epidemic that is impacting so many parts of our counties and our lives.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the drug manufacturers were actually telling prescribers that these kinds of opioids were not addictive?

Sara Guild:

So what we are being told and what I have heard and what the evidence seems to indicate in a number of reports and things like that is that the pharmaceutical companies were providing, at best, misleading and at worst outright lies in the research and the risks associated with certain medications. This wasn’t isolated necessarily to opioids, but opioids is where the greatest risk was because that was opening up a lot more people to addictions that they’ve now continued on beyond that initial prescription from a doctor whom they’re supposed to be able to trust. And those doctors were prescribing on good faith as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, in other words, it’s the manufacturers allegedly to blame and not the users or the prescribers.

Sara Guild:

That is how it appears from the information that we’ve been getting. The manufacturers were giving this information out solely to increase profits and to increase those sales. And as far as I'm concerned, if we have a business that is misleading consumers about the risks of what they’re doing, intentionally misleading consumers, and that misleading leads to an epidemic, a health epidemic that spans beyond just a few people to where it’s now nationwide, that’s something that needs to be addressed.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what has been the cost in your county, both financially and in a human toll?

Sara Guild:

I’ve got to say I've been shocked. I’ve been on the county board for just a year and a half. And in that year and a half, we have been asked to increase the number of social workers, to increase the number of people in our DA’s office that are handling cases related to not just drug felonies, but to the consequences of children being taken out of their homes because their parents are so addicted to drugs they can’t handle raising their kids. Our foster services are overwhelmed. Our jails are overwhelmed. We are seeing more and more costs every year with fewer and fewer resources coming from state and federal government to help us offset those. We’ve got to have some kind of statement made here that this can’t happen.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. But we will be watching these counties as they continue to vote on joining on to this potential lawsuit. Sara Guild, thank you very much.

Sara Guild:

Thank you very much.