ASBURY PARK PRESS :: MONMOUTH EDITION APP.COM $2.

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Thirty Players of the Year will be announced Wednesday
when the Asbury Park Press Sports Awards returns for its
second year, featuring Dick Vitale. Be sure to support the SUNDAY 06.11.17
amazing student-athletes of the Jersey Shore get your
tickets now: sportsawards.app.com.
INSIDE: UP TO

$936
IN COUPON
SAVINGS

Tapwrit overtakes favored Irish War Cry to win Belmont Stakes Sports 1C

NARCOTIC
SPECIAL REPORT
Should New Jersey sue
Big Pharma over the
rising opioid epidemic?

NATION
Map shows the
change in legally
prescribed opioids in
2006 and 2016. The
darker the color, the
higher the percentage
change occurs over
the last decade.
Source: Compiled by the Asbury
Park Press from the Drug
Enforcement Agencys annual
controlled substance reporting
system for all opioid-type drugs,
by zip 3 geographic areas.

KEN SERRANO @KENSERRANOAPP

1,587
Number of New
Drug companies should never place their desire for profits above the health Jersey residents who
and well-being of their customers or the communities where those customers died of all drug
live. overdoses in 2015.

AMY NEWMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
David Noll is an associate professor at Rutgers Law School
where he teaches about private litgation and regulation.
So begins the first sentence of a 103-page lawsuit recently filed by the Ohio
attorney general against opioid manufacturers. It alleges they purposely down-
played the dangers associated with their products in order to make big profits.
The Ohio lawsuit follows a similar claim made in 2015 by Mississippi. That
6,100
More than 6,100
state, too, claims drugmakers should pay for the harm associated with their pain- residents in New
killer products such as OxyContin and Percocet. Opioid-ravaged locales from Jersey died in the last
Suffolk County on Long Island to Chicago have filed similar suits. decade from heroin
The suits claim that the pharmaceutical companies used a variety of deceptive and morphine alone.
methods to hook new patients on opioids, and defrauded state taxpayers. Because
opioids are such an addictive drug, abusers can pursue illegal narcotics like her-
oin, and even fatally overdose. MORE ONLINE
The list of lawsuits is growing as states and local governments reprise a play- Go to on.APP.com/
book successfully wielded against tobacco companies in the 1990s. heroin for stories and
More than 33,000 people in the U.S. died of opioid overdoses in 2015, which videos about heroin at
includes legal prescriptions and illegal narcotics, according to the federal Cen- the Jersey Shore.
ters for Disease Control and Prevention.
See NARCOTIC, Page 15A

In Bedminster, Trump seen as good neighbor

MIKE DEAK @MIKEDEAKMYCJ
BEDMINSTER - Ed Russo, a former township Plan-
ning Board chairman, clearly remembers his first
meeting with Donald Trump.
Russo was invited to meet Trump because the real
estate magnate was interested in buying the 500-acre
estate once owned by colorful automaker John DeLo-
rean and turning it into a country club in New Jerseys
wealth belt, where horses outnumber people.
Russo, a zoning and environmental expert, knew
that golf courses are a worst-case land use for envi-
ronmentalists. Golf courses pollute streams with
chemical runoff and use insane amounts of water for
irrigation. Russo had helped draft Bedminsters zon-
ing ordinance that would make it difficult for anyone
to put a tee in the ground.
At that meeting in Trump Tower, Russo lectured
Trump about the thicket of regulations designed to
make it almost impossible to build a golf course in Bed-
minster.
Im worth 6 billion dollars and no little town like
Bedford is going to tell me what to do, Russo remem-
bers Trump roaring back.
After Russo corrected Trump on the name of the
town, the meeting ended abruptly, and on his way
home, Russo vowed, Donald Trump will never be able
to put two Popsicle sticks together on that property
never.
But now, almost two decades later, the property on
See TRUMP, Page 8A
MORE ONLINE
A Wall teens Donald Trump shirt was censored in his high
school yearbook. For story and video, go to APP.com and
search T-shirt.

Great Luck of
outdoors
Ocean County
the Irish
The 47th Annual
beachedition
YOUR WEEKEND GUIDE DOWN THE SHORE
Parks Recreation Irish Festival will
Celebration in
Lakewood will be
held from 10 a.m.
be held at the
Monmouth Park
Racetrack from
60 87/70 8
to 3 p.m. The event noon to 7 p.m. Ocean Temp Todays High/Low Todays UV
is free and will Admission is $5. So
include kayaks, wear your best
golf, games and
live music.
green and join the
fun.
All this and more inside! 2A

Adam West, who portrayed

Batman in a campy 1960s TV
series, has died. Page 2B
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VOLUME 138

NUMBER 138

SINCE 1879
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