A dozen prescription drug distributors have been put on notice that their recent settlements with the state won't block the Kanawha County Commission and City of Charleston from filing a separate lawsuit against the companies.
Kanawha Commission President Kent Carper, county Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Miller and Charleston City Attorney Paul Ellis said the state of West Virginia's settlements with the drug wholesalers will have "no effect" on the county's and city's "actual or potential claims," according to a letter sent Friday.
"We're saying enjoy your settlement, but it does not prevent us from doing what we're going to do: We're going to bring litigation and protect the local taxpayer," Carper said.
On Dec. 28, state officials announced they had reached a settlement with Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. They're expected to disclose settlement details - such as the monetary amount the two wholesalers will pay the state - in a news release Monday. The money will go to substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, state officials have said.
Previous settlements with smaller drug distributors have netted the state more than $11 million over the past year.
The lawsuits - filed by then-Attorney General Darrell McGraw in 2012 and inherited by Attorney General Patrick Morrisey - allege the wholesale distributors fueled the state's opioid epidemic by shipping an excessive number of pain pills to West Virginia.
Carper said the heroin and prescription painkiller problem has cost Kanawha County millions of dollars a year.
"The purpose of the letter is to protect the interest of local taxpayers," he said. "The ambulance service, sheriff department, 911 center, the fire department, the county, the city - these are the ones that have paid for all this suffering and misery, and they've been left out of the state's lawsuit. We've been left out."
Between 2007 and 2012, drug wholesalers shipped 66.6 million hydrocodone pills and 19.6 oxycodone tablets to Kanawha County, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration data obtained by the Gazette-Mail.
Kanawha County isn't the first county to target the drug shippers that transport medications from manufacturers to pharmacies and hospitals.
On Dec. 30, the McDowell County Commission filed a lawsuit against the nation's three largest drug wholesalers and a Bluefield doctor.
The suit cited opioid drug shipping data published a week earlier in the Gazette-Mail - part of the newspaper's "Painkiller Profiteers" series, which found that drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in six years, while more than 1,700 people fatally overdosed on those two drugs.
McDowell County has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation.
The drug wholesalers say they only ship drugs to licensed pharmacies that fill prescriptions from licensed doctors.
Reach Eric Eyre at 304-348-4869, ericeyre@wvgazettemail.com or follow @ericeyre on Twitter.