Phillip Duncan Discusses The Opioid Crisis With ABC7

Firm founder Phillip Duncan sat with KATV channel 7 to discuss the opioid epidemic.

You can watch the interview HERE.

TRANSCRIPT:

Philip Duncan is here today; we’re going to talk a little bit about the opioid crisis, which we hear a lot about but maybe we don’t really understand, and you’ve done a lot of research on this; welcome to the show

thank you for having me I’m glad to be here; yes, I’ve looked at it, it came on my radar when I started seeing some lawsuits about it, and just became interested in what are they, what are these lawsuits about; right, and because the law generally will seek a remedy to society problems, and this is a societal problem, and as I began to look at it what I what I found out is something that makes common sense; opioids are really heroin, and it is a a drug, a controlled substance, and it began to be developed and utilized as a pain management tool, and it got out of hand

how did it become such the problem that it is today?

well the opioids are synthetic, you know manufactured heroin, and it’s legal to dispense it under a controlled substance act, and most states, in fact all of them, have it as a controlled substance, and as a controlled substance then it can be sold and abused, and what happened is manufacturers of the synthetic drugs began to market this and repurpose it from a controlled substance to almost like it was candy, it could just be dispensed and used like aspirin to a certain extent and in order to do this they needed credible sources and they hired credible names, and I’m not saying this person, he’s not involved at all, but to give you an example like Dr. Oz, if you had Dr. Oz and could hire Dr. Oz and have him become your spokesman, they hired doctors that were spokesmen and had high profile people come out and endorse this, not only to the communities and in the paper, but on the streets in terms of down to even knowing the doctors schedules and how to get the doctors who are the family practitioners; they’re not scientist out to research, they’re taking care of people, and so actually it was a deception and fraud, and that’s what those lawsuits are about, deception and fraud, a marketing scheme to cause Americans, ordinary citizens, like grandmothers and teenagers to not be afraid of this and to take it as long-term pain management, not for two or three days, because it’s very addictive and becomes addictive very quickly, and there’s billions of dollars that were being made

why should we all care about this problem? why if we’re not addicted, we don’t have any family members addicted, why should we all care as a society?

well one thing that the statistics are showing is almost all families, or extended families, especially if you say friends are affected by this and it’s becoming known where it wasn’t known before, and in the process of this it affects our entire community, it’s a society problem, it’s become an epidemic and by that what I mean is our hospitals, our health system, our police force, our emergency systems, because the death toll for this has risen; Arkansas’s in the top 20%, it has been proclaimed as a national epidemic, also on a state level. What it really it boils down to, these manufacturers went out and took control almost of a portion of our funds, the police, the 911, the hospitals, the rescue the responders, to the public safety; right, we expend money, huge amounts of money and the statistics show it’s measured in hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of time for for the states, so it has become a huge problem on society that we have to deal with,  we have to pay for, and we have to live with right? it’s costing all of us money and hurting our society.

so you guys are there at Duncan Law firm to help people if they have any questions about this, or really any legal matters?

right, well yes but the issue about opioids is such a society problem, even you know our mayor Mark Stover is co-chair of a national task force, and so it affects our city and it has been recognized as affecting our city as well as the other cities and counties in our state; it’s gonna take everybody getting involved; it takes everybody just to make it better

alright, we want to remind everybody of course about the Duncan Firm right there on Shackleford here in Little Rock; if you have any legal problems and you need help, you need advice, of course their number is always open to you if you need a lawyer to help represent you; thank you we appreciate you coming in today; all right, back in just a moment