City joins class action opiate suit

The City of Green River will seek damages related to opiate addiction after a vote by the city council last week.

The Green River City Council approved an agreement with attorneys Charles Barnum and Rick Koehmstedt to represent the city in a class-action lawsuit against multiple pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies for the alleged over prescription of opium-based pain relievers. The city joins Rock Springs and Sweetwater County in the lawsuit. According to Council documents, the city will pay the attorneys 20 percent of the gross amount received, plus incurred costs, which would only be paid if the companies involved are forced to pay damages.

“The city doesn’t have to advance any cost or pay any costs,” city attorney Galen West said.

For Green River’s Chief of Police, Tom Jarvie, the first time he saw heroin was in the mid 2000s. Since then, the city’s police officers have dealt with numerous opioid-based overdoses, some of which have resulted in death.

“Our community has been affected by this,” Jarvie told the Council.

According to Council documents, Wyoming averages 16.9 opiate deaths per 100,000 residents, or nearly 100 opiate-related deaths per year.

“The number is more stark when those losses are sustained from three of the (23) counties – Laramie, Natrona and Sweetwater,” Council documents state.

The Council documents also note that in 2015, 383,000 prescriptions for opiate drugs were written by providers, equating to roughly 65 percent of the state’s population.

According to Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspe, his office is “seeing more and more cases of opioid possession and use.”

“We have also seen an increase in driving while under the influence of opiates,” Erramouspe said. “This is a form of DUI that is very troublesome due to the specific effects opioids have on one’s ability to drive safely.”

Erramouspe said people addicted to opioids obtain them through prescriptions, which sometimes leads to prescription fraud when the supply runs out. Erramouspe also said it isn’t uncommon for opiate users to switch to using heroin, also derived from opium, when prescription opiates becomes more difficult to obtain.

“Of course, with heroin use, comes the increased danger of death by overdose,” he said.

The demand for opiate-based drugs has also opened the door for more dangerous substances to come into the area as well, Erramouspe said. One drug Erramouspe mentioned, fentanyl, has become a major problem in the U.S. and is the cause for many overdose deaths.

According to the DEA, the drug is 80-100 times more powerful than morphine and was originally intended to help cancer patients with pain management. However, the DEA also notes the drug is abused and is added to heroin to increase its potency or disguised as a highly potent form of heroin.

“Many users believe that they are purchasing heroin and actually don’t know that they are purchasing fentanyl, which often results in overdose deaths,” the DEA notes on its website.