NORMAN — An attorney for the state accused Johnson & Johnson of providing false and deceptive information to the court Friday as action heated up in a trial where the company and its subsidiaries have been accused of helping cause the state’s opioid crisis through false and misleading marketing.
Friday’s most heated court action centered around a 2003 letter to the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal that advocated for the use of opioids by pregnant women.
The author of that letter was Steven P. Passik, one of the individuals whom Johnson & Johnson at times paid to serve as a key opinion leader in its efforts to persuade doctors that untreated chronic pain is a major problem in this country and that opioids should be used more widely.
Under cross-examination by a Johnson & Johnson attorney earlier in the week, Terri White, Oklahoma commissioner of mental health and substance abuse services, was repeatedly questioned about a document prepared by Johnson & Johnson that indicated that Passik wasn’t paid by the company as a key opinion leader in 2003, when he wrote the letter to the editor, or any of the four preceding years or five years afterward.
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