Cherokee Nation Sues Drug Firms, Retailers For Flooding Communities With Opioids

Lawyers for the Cherokee Nation opened a new line of attack against the pharmaceutical industry today, filing a lawsuit in tribal court that accuses the nation’s six top drug distributors and pharmacies of flooding communities in Oklahoma with hundreds of millions of highly addictive pain pills. The suit alleges that the companies violated sovereign Cherokee laws by failing to prevent the diversion of pain pills to the black market, profiting from the growing opioid epidemic and decimating communities across the nation’s 14 counties in the state.