Travis Bornstein never told his friends about his son Tyler’s drug problem. He was too embarrassed.
Then, on September 28, 2014, Tyler’s body was found in a vacant lot in Akron, Ohio. The 23-year-old had become addicted to opioid pain killers after several sports-related injuries and surgeries. Unable to afford long-term treatment, he ultimately turned to a cheaper drug — the heroin that killed him.
“Now I have no choice but to speak out,” the elder Bornstein, president of Teamsters Local 24 in Akron, told a crowd of thousands at the union’s convention in July 2016. As he proceeded to share the unvarnished tale of how a middle class, star athlete had wound up in that vacant lot, Bornstein lit a fire under the 1.4-million-member organization.
Right there on the convention floor, rank-and-file Teamsters spontaneously began gathering donations for a nonprofit organization the Bornstein family has established, Breaking Barriers — Hope Is Alive, to expand drug treatment in Ohio. Eventually, the union and its members pledged $1.4 million.
Travis Bornstein, delivering the speech that inspired the Teamsters union to action on the opioid epidemic. Photo: Teamsters.
Bornstein also inspired a Teamsters campaign to go after the drug industry CEOs who’ve been profiting off the country’s opioid epidemic. The three largest U.S. prescription drug wholesalers — McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen — have enjoyed strong sales as the country’s opioid problem has reached epidemic proportions.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription drugs and heroin) has quadrupled since 1999. In 2015, opioid deaths in the United States hit a record-breaking 33,000.
On March 2, the Teamsters held a rally outside the annual shareholder meeting of one of these wholesalers — AmerisourceBergen — demanding that the company take responsibility for their role in the epidemic and conduct a full investigation of their distribution practices. According to a Charleston Gazette-Mail investigation based on U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration documents, AmerisourceBergen delivered 118 million opioid pills to West Virginia pharmacies over a six-year period (2008-2012). During that timeframe, 1,728 people in the state overdosed on the painkillers.
Altogether, drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone opioid pills to West Virginia in just those six years — 433 for every man, woman and child in the state.
In January 2017, AmerisourceBergen paid $16 million to settle a case brought by West Virginia over their negligence. But the company’s CEO, Steven Collis, has not coughed up a penny of the tens of millions of dollars in compensation he pocketed as the firm was reaping opioid windfalls. The Teamsters are demanding that some of his pay be “clawed back,” in the same way that Wells Fargo executives involved in last year’s bogus account scandal had to forfeit some of their compensation.
“When it comes to the role of drug distributors fueling the nation’s opioid epidemic, West Virginia is the canary in the coal mine,” Ken Hall, international secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters union told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. “The [AmerisourceBergen] board cannot afford to let management sweep this issue under the carpet with ad-hoc settlements, but must rather undertake a thorough investigation of the company’s sales practices, compliance programs, and senior executives who dropped the ball.”
