Johnson & Johnson: talc production stopped after cancer lawsuits
Stop to the production of Johnson & Johnson baby powder from 2023. The company made the decision after more than 40,000 lawsuits accusing this product of containing asbestos and causing cancer. The company denies the allegations and continues to deem its talcum powder safe, however it has announced that it will replace the talcum powder with a cornstarch-based powder, already launched in the American and Canadian markets.
We continue to evaluate and optimize our portfolio to be better positioned for long-term growth, this transition will help streamline our product offering.
The explanation comes in a short note, in which the company said it made a business decision to replace corn starch with talc in this baby product after receiving some 38,000 lawsuits linking its use to long-term development of cancer.
In late 2018, information appeared indicating that J&J had known for decades that its talc contained asbestos, with adverse health effects. Since then, J&J has faced thousands of lawsuits accusing the manufacturer of contributing to the development of ovarian cancer in female consumers. In 2021, the US Supreme Court sentenced the company to pay $ 2.12 billion in a ruling in favor of 22 women who claimed they got cancer after using asbestos-containing baby powder.
The decision, in addition to the millionaire lawsuits, is also due to other legal problems: the company was in fact sentenced to pay millions of dollars to several states, along with other large drug distributors, for their responsibility in the opioid crisis. Opioids are drugs that are used for pain management and create major addiction problems. According to many states and local governments in the United States, both pharmaceutical companies such as J&J and those that were involved in the distribution of these drugs are responsible for having contributed to the serious health crisis still ongoing in the country, which in the last twenty years has caused the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. In particular, they accuse them of not having sufficiently controlled the circulation of substances and of having minimized the risk of addiction in the sale of painkillers.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/business/johnson-and-johnson-talc-corn-starch.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62514263
