Robert VerBruggen writes at National Review Online about efforts to identify a malefactor in the American opioid crisis.

To what extent is the opioid crisis the fault of drug companies such as Purdue, that created OxyContin? Several recent lawsuits by state and local governments — including the state of Ohio and the city of Everett, Wash. — are aiming to test that question in court. These entities claim that drug makers’ aggressive marketing and failure to shut down illegal trafficking contributed mightily to the epidemic. They’d like to recoup the money that public health-insurance plans spent on unnecessary opioids, as well as the public costs of opioid addiction.

By most accounts, these lawsuits are a long shot — they are a good deal less compelling than successful previous suits in a similar vein, such as the action against tobacco companies in the 1990s or the 2007 action against Purdue itself. But they invite us to ask who is responsible for America’s addiction to opioids, and what the role of civil lawsuits, as opposed to criminal prosecutions and regulatory sanctions, should be in bringing those people to justice. …

… There is a good case to be made that Purdue’s aggressive marketing efforts in the 1990s and early 2000s helped lay the groundwork for the opioid epidemic. Ten years after the previous round of criminal charges and settlements, though, no one can plausibly claim not to know that Oxy is addictive, and the blame deserves to be distributed much more widely. In addition to drug makers and wholesalers who fail to monitor their sales effectively — lapses that, yes, should be punished when they can be proven — there are pharmacies that sell drugs to illicit buyers, corrupt doctors who prescribe to addicts and dealers, patients who sell their pills or give them away to friends, gangs that traffic narcotics, and of course individuals who get hooked by crushing pills to get high.