The Miami-Dade County School Board has filed a federal lawsuit against more than a dozen corporations that manufacture or distribute opioids, claiming that the nation’s fourth largest school district should be compensated for the money it has spent battling the “worst man-made epidemic in modern medical history.”
In a nearly 300-page lawsuit filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the school system claims it has been forced to spend money trying to keep opioids out of schools and mitigating the addictive drugs’ harmful effects on students and families.
For example, the district claims it has spent money training nurses and school resource officers in treating overdoses, providing in-school nursing to students and employees suffering from opioid addictions and offering mental health care to students who have been affected by the epidemic.
Miami-Dade appears to be the first school district in the country to sue over the opioid crisis. States have filed thousands of lawsuits against companies that have profited off the sale of opioids, with settlement offers so far in the millions and billions.
The lawsuit was first reported by Politico Florida.
Read the complaint here:
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