New Hampshire is joining 40 other states in a lawsuit against the maker of Suboxone, a drug widely promoted to help opioid addicts.
The Attorney General says Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals conspired to monopolize the U.S. Suboxone market, inflating the company's profits.
The suit alleges that by shifting from pills to dissolvable strips, Reckitt manipulated the market, delaying the time other companies could introduce cheaper, generic versions of the drug, a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone.
"They could maintain their monopoly position in the market for longer than they should have been able to -that's the allegation," says James Boffetti heads the Consumer Protection Bureau at the Justice Department.
New Hampshire's Medicaid program alone spent more than $7 million on the drug between 2010 and 2013.
