August Editorial Winner

Job well done

By Wayne Trotter, Countywide & Sun

“The opioid crisis has ravaged the State of Oklahoma.
It must be abated immediately.” 
District Judge Thad Balkman 

In a comment delivered just prior to releasing his ruling on the Johnson & Johnson opioid case

Even the greenest reporter on any news staff knows this much about covering courts: You have to be there to correctly understand everything that’s going on. In modern democratic governments, judges are the Twenty-First Century restoration of those all-powerful medieval kings and too many of today’s attorneys absolutely love to play the role of the evil sorcerer ... you know, the meek little nobody who enjoys creeping just barely across every forbidden line but always manages to pause just before earning his or her golden opportunity to meet the Royal Beheader close up and person-to-person.

That being the case, we would never attempt to convince any of our gentle readers we actually spent the last couple of days of May, every working weekday in June and all of the first half of July thirty long, lonely miles west of Tecumseh in a Cleveland County courtroom listening to well-dressed, highly-paid lawyers talk about opioids in front of a less highly paid but even more interestingly attired judge. It’s confession time: We didn’t do that. Furthermore, we never wanted to do that. We had better irons in the fire. We were doing other things that didn’t come quite so close to hanging around and watching clothes dry ... you know, watching clothes dry in the olden days before that was accomplished in a half-hour or so inside a twirling, properly heated metal barrel.

In spite of that obviously lethargic attitude, we also wanted our loyal readers to understand that we really do care a great deal about what happened in Oklahoma’s first-in-the-nation attempt to recover some reparations and comfort for those individuals whose health and well-being had evidently been damaged by overly zealous drug manufacturers and providers who most arguably went way too far in the way that they managed to produce, provide, and peddle those same opioids. Judge Balkman made that crystal clear in the quote at the top of this editorial: “The opioid crisis has ravaged the State of Oklahoma. It must be abated immediately.” Thank you, judge. That’s worth a million less meaningful words. Perhaps even more.

So after the decision was in and the best known defendant, the same Johnson & Johnson most everyone has admired, trusted and traded with for the majority of their lives, was suddenly under court order along with its subsidiaries to pay a whopping $572 million to give Oklahoma an opportunity to begin treating and hopefully dealing with a crisis that has crippled and even killed so many of this state’s otherwise innocent citizens. The meaning and impact of this accomplishment suddenly became crystal clear. Oklahoma was the first to do something no other entity had yet been able to do. Barring a reversal by a higher court, this state now had access to a fortune large enough to assist people who had been harmed ... perhaps unwittingly harmed but nevertheless treated very badly and in some instances with a loss of life. No matter how one interpreted this, the ruling handed down last week in Norman, Oklahoma, was a landmark event, something that is very likely to be echoed across the country.

If only because the author of this editorial had a less-damaging brush with the opioid danger than many who turned out to be less fortunate, we fully understand how dangerous and scary opioids can be. We appreciate the quick action taken by Mike Hunter, Oklahoma’s attorney general, in pursuing and securing this judgment. We appreciate what he did and we appreciate the way Judge Balkman handled what was undeniably a touchy subject. Well done. You are good and faithful servants.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Several years ago, Wayne Trotter, who writes the editorials for The Countywide & Sun, was afflicted with several bouts of sciatica. To help fight his pain, he was prescribed an opioid. Following the directions issued with the prescription, he took the recommended dose before coming to work the first day after having the prescription filled. When it came time for lunch, he asked Gloria (his wife) where to go. She suggested Zocalo’s, the restaurant that was on South Broadway at that time. Gloria said he liked their quesadillas. He looked blank and asked “What’s a quesadilla?” Thinking he must be kidding, she suggested they go to Boomerang for lunch. He replied, “What’s a Boomerang?” Since inability to remember isn’t considered an asset for an editorial writer (or a journalist of any stripe), he gave up opioids at that moment.