Big pharma executives mocked ‘pillbillies’ in emails, West Virginia opioid trial hears

The trial of pharmaceutical firms accused of illegally flooding West Virginia with opioids was told last week that senior staff at AmerisourceBergen, the 10th-largest company in the US by revenue, routinely disparaged communities blighted by the worst drug epidemic in the country’s history.

One email in 2011 included a rhyme built around “a poor mountaineer” named Jed who “barely kept his habit fed”. According to the verse, “Jed” travels to Florida to buy “Hillbilly Heroin”, the nickname for OxyContin, the drug manufactured by Purdue Pharma which kickstarted an epidemic that has claimed more than 500,000 lives.

Florida was well known through the 2000s for lax regulation of pain clinics where doctors illegally prescribed and dispensed large amounts of opioids to those the verse calls a “bevy of Pillbillies”.

Another rhyme described Kentucky as “OxyContinville” because of the high use of the drug in the poor rural east of the state.

Zimmerman told the trial he regretted circulating the mocking rhyme but it was “a reflection of the environment at the time”. He claimed the emails were simply a means of expressing frustration as the company worked to prevent opioids falling into the wrong hands. Zimmerman said the company culture was of the “highest calibre”.

Farrell put it to Zimmerman that he failed to enforce company policies to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and to withhold deliveries while they were investigated. Zimmerman claimed that if the company had stopped deliveries it would have harmed patients who needed the drugs.