Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., plans to testify against prescription drug wholesalers that shipped hundreds of millions of pain pills to West Virginia over the past decade.
Manchin's name tops a "witness list" of 40 individuals who've agreed to testify against the drug companies when the state case goes to trial in Boone County. A special assistant attorney general filed the list in circuit court last week.
The lawsuit alleges that the drug wholesalers helped fuel West Virginia's prescription drug problem by shipping an excessive number of painkillers to the Mountain State.
"I'll do anything to raise the profile of this thing that's been so damaging and so horrific to our state and country," Manchin said. "If people are harmed, I'm going to speak out and do something."
The West Virginia Attorney General's Office, the state Department of Health and Human Resources and the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety are suing the prescription drug distributor.
DHHR Secretary Karen Bowling and DMAPS Secretary Joe Thornton have agreed to testify against the drug companies, as well.
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whose office also is representing the state agencies, is not listed as a potential witness.
"Why would you be unwilling to testify?" Manchin asked. "Why is a politician afraid to go to court and testify against things that are killing people?"
Asked why Morrisey wasn't scheduled as a witness against the drug companies, the attorney general's spokesman issued a statement saying Manchin, the state's former governor, managed state agencies "at a time when there was a tremendous number of pills flowing into the state."
"To the contrary, Attorney General Morrisey has never had oversight responsibilities for those agencies," said Curtis Johnson, Morrisey's press secretary. "The Office of Attorney General is in a representative role regarding those agencies' specific claims."
In January, Morrisey announced that he would recuse himself from the case, following a state Lawyer Disciplinary Board investigation into his past ties to the drug companies. Before taking office, Morrisey lobbied for a Washington, D.C., trade group - the Health Care Distribution Management Association - that represents most of the drug wholesalers named in West Virginia's lawsuit.
Morrisey's lobbying work generated $250,000 for his Washington, D.C., law firm, King & Spalding, according to federal lobbying disclosure forms.
The disciplinary board concluded that Morrisey did not violate any lawyer ethics rules, but the board suggested he step aside from the drug company lawsuit to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Morrisey assigned the case to Chief Operating Officer Anthony Martin and Deputy Attorney General Vaughn Sizemore.
Morrisey, who inherited the 2012 lawsuit from then-Attorney General Darrell McGraw, is running for re-election this year against Democrat Doug Reynolds.
Morrisey has made fighting prescription drug abuse a platform of his campaign.
Manchin said he hopes Morrisey will "sign on later" and testify against the drug companies.
"This really baffles me," Manchin said. "There's been a lot of advertising about everything he'd like to do [to curb drug abuse]. Now's the time to do something about it. Just do it."
Johnson responded that Morrisey's office is "leading the prosecution of the case and has done as much or more than anyone in the state to fight substance abuse."
"Attorney General Morrisey just released sweeping guidelines that will dramatically reduce the flow of opioids into the state, and has advanced many substance abuse initiatives to fight this epidemic," Johnson said in an email.
Other state officials who've agreed to testify against the drug companies include Public Health Commissioner Rahul Gupta, and DHHR administrators and statisticians.
West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, with prescription drugs causing the bulk of those deaths. Overdose deaths increased last year.
"We've got 600 people dying a year [in West Virginia]," Manchin said. "If that's not an epidemic, I don't know what the hell is."
A large number of prosecutors, law enforcement officers and prison officials also are scheduled to testify.
Prosecutors and judges have lamented that prescription drug-related crimes consume 90 percent of their criminal court dockets, according to the state's lawsuit.
Also, about 35 percent of babies are born drug-addicted in West Virginia, one of the highest rates in the nation.
To that end, four neonatal doctors from hospitals across the state have agreed to testify in the upcoming trial. At least one former addict, a woman who lives in Boone County and now works as a drug counselor, also will take the stand.
In a revised complaint filed last year, the state's lawyers disclosed that 11 prescription drug distributors shipped nearly 60 million oxycodone pills and 140.6 million hydrocodone pills - both are powerful and addictive painkillers - to West Virginia between 2007 and 2012. The updated lawsuit included pill counts for each wholesaler. The pain-pill numbers were culled from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration database.
For more than a year, the drug wholesalers sought to keep secret court documents that included information about pill shipments to specific pharmacies in Southern West Virginia.
Last month, a Boone County judge issued an order to unseal some of the court records, after the Charleston Gazette-Mail challenged the drug companies' efforts to keep the shipment numbers under wraps.
The court records showed that some drug wholesalers were shipping excessive quantities of painkillers to notorious "pill mill" pharmacies that filled prescriptions for pain clinics that federal authorities have since shut down.
"We were targeted," Manchin said. "We were easy prey."
The trial is expected to start in early January.
Two weeks ago, Manchin introduced a bill to tax prescription opioids. The tax would raise more than $1.5 billion a year, and the new revenue would go to drug treatment facilities. No Republican senators have agreed to support the bill, Manchin said.
"It would be strictly used to fund treatment," he said. "There are tobacco taxes, alcohol taxes. You tell me anything that's more devastating than opiates and addiction."
Reach Eric Eyre at ericeyre@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4869 or follow @ericeyre on Twitter.