The detailed abatement plan was slowly revealed Friday during Day 19 of testimony in a trial in Cleveland County District Court where Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has accused Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries of creating a public nuisance that helped cause the opioid crisis.
The state has accused the opioid manufacturer of false and deceptive marketing that downplayed the risks opioid painkillers while overstating their benefits.
From 2000-2017, there were over 6,100 prescription opioid-related deaths in Oklahoma, state officials say.
The attorney general wants District Judge Thad Balkman to order Johnson & Johnson to pay the state to fix the opioid abuse problem.
Jessica Hawkins, senior director of prevention services for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, has spent two days testifying about how the proposed $17.5 billion in abatement money would be spent.
Methodically, she described all the proposed expenditures as "reasonable and necessary" to accomplish the abatement goal.
In some cases, she insisted the projections were even "conservative."
Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson quickly challenged that assertion.
Johnson & Johnson attorney Stephen Brody quizzed Hawkins about why the state would include $1.3 billion for universal drug and alcohol screening of SoonerCare patients when Medicaid is already picking up the cost for those services.
Hawkins snapped back that there had been testimony in court about Johnson & Johnson's role in creating the opioid crisis and she didn't think it was the taxpayers' responsibility to pick up the tab.
Brody also questioned Hawkins about why Johnson & Johnson should be required to pay for the screening of patients who had never even taken one of the company's opioid drugs.
Hawkins insisted that the request is reasonable.
Hawkins described the state's abatement proposals as "evidence-based" to produce results and contrasted them with a program called "Smart Moves, Smart Choices" that a Johnson & Johnson employee testified the company had developed in collaboration with school nurses to combat prescription drug abuse among teens.
Boulevard Academy in Edmond was one of the schools where the program was taught, the Johnson & Johnson official said.
Hawkins said she has colleagues at the school and they told her they weren't aware of the program.
"This program is very unlikely to be effective," Hawkins said, adding that such programs are typically developed by marketing departments to try to make it look like a company is a "good corporate citizen."
"The don't work because they're not supposed to work," she said.
During earlier testimony, Hawkins outlined a wide array of services and expenditures that she believes are necessary to abate the opioid crisis.
Examples of expenditures she recommended included:
• $693 million for a syringe replacement program to reduce he spread of disease through dirty needles.
• $735 million to purchase technology and hire staff to make it easier for state agencies to share patient information.
• $435 million for community prevention.
• $239 million for higher education discretionary prevention funds.
• $2.4 billion to provide pain prevention and non-opioid pain management programs like yoga and physical therapy to SoonerCare patients.
John Sparks, Oklahoma counsel for Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., criticized the state's abatement estimates in a prepared statement Friday.
“After four weeks of trial, the state continues on a far-reaching odyssey to seek damages disguised as abatement," Sparks said. "The state’s proposal, developed solely for this litigation, seeks damages that go far beyond costs related to opioid addiction and abuse. The fact remains that the state has presented no evidence that Janssen products or actions caused Oklahoma’s opioid crisis, and Janssen did everything a responsible company should do.”
Cross-examination of Hawkins is scheduled to continue 9 a.m. Monday.