Secret reports on opioid sales to be released; last day to sign up for Fri. workshop on covering epidemic, recovery

"A special master in a landmark national opioid trial has ordered the release of previously secret reports that detail “suspicious” orders of powerful painkillers placed by pharmacies and purchased from giant drug suppliers," Eric Eyre reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail and The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va. Special Master David Cohen, who is assisting with more than 2,000 lawsuits against drug companies in Cleveland's federal court, also ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to unseal two additional years of data tracking all prescription opioid shipments to U.S. pharmacies. He also unsealed the transcripts from hundreds of depositions, including testimony from DEA agents and executives of pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors.

"The unsealing of the records follows a yearlong legal battle by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Herald-Dispatch and The Washington Post to make the information public," Eyre reports. "The nation’s largest drug distributors and manufacturers fought for months to keep the pharmacy order reports and data under wraps. The reports and data single-out pharmacies that ordered unusually large numbers of prescription-opioid pain pills."

Prescription drug distributors are required under federal law to report to the DEA suspiciously large orders of opioids and then block such orders, but a congressional report last year said the drug makers routinely did not do this.

Though the DEA no longer opposed making the reports public, the companies wanted a judge to block their release, saying the reports were "confidential business data" that contained "trade secrets," Eyre reports.  They also said releasing the reports would violate privacy rights for pharmacies and customers, and said that unscrupulous pharmacies could learn from past reports how to "game the system" in order to avoid being flagged for suspicious orders in the future.

Cohen said some details in the suspicious orders might remain private if the pharmaceutical companies could show how the specific information in question would help rogue pharmacies divert drugs to the black market, Eyre reports.

Eyre will speak Friday morning at Covering Substance Abuse and Recovery: A Workshop for Journalists, in Ashland, Ky., just 10 miles down the Ohio River from Huntington. Registration is $60 and is still available, but will close for certain today.