Purdue Pharma manufactured the painkiller OxyContin, the overprescription of which is generally considered to have triggered the opioid crisis in the United States. The laboratory abandoned opioids in 2018.
The North American laboratory Purdue Pharma reached an agreement with fifteen North American states, according to which they will have to pay a total of 7.4 billion dollars for their role in the opioid crisis.
According to a statement released on Thursday by Letitia James, attorney general of the State of New York, the agreement – which has not yet been validated by a court – provides for the Sackler family, owner of the pharmaceutical company, to pay up to 6.5 billion of dollars in fifteen years and the pharmaceutical laboratory 900 million.
“The Sackler family relentlessly sought profits at the expense of vulnerable patients and played a central role in creating and spreading the opioid epidemic,” commented Letitia James, quoted in the statement.
“I will continue to pursue the companies that caused the opioid crisis,” he warned, adding that, at this stage, he has already recovered more than $3 billion for the State of New York as part of agreements with other protagonists.
The Sacklers are accused of having aggressively promoted this medicine, aware of its highly addictive nature, which cost them tens of billions of dollars.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 727,000 people died in the country between 1999 and 2022 due to an overdose linked to the ingestion of opioids, whether obtained by prescription or illegally.
For the first time since 2018, the number of deaths linked to opioids (mainly fentanyl) fell slightly in 2023.
According to the National Center on Addiction (NIDA), more than 115 million pills containing illegal fentanyl were seized by law enforcement agencies in 2023 in the United States. This is 2,300 times more than in 2017.
Compensation will be used for projects fight against addiction and detox
The compensation announced Thursday will be used to fund addiction and detoxification programs.
In addition to the financial sanction, the Sackler family will no longer have control over Purdue and will be prevented from selling opiates in the United States, the press release also states, specifying that the company’s future will be decided later.
In June 2024, the United States Supreme Court blocked an agreement reached in 2022 with the fifty American states, for the payment of around six billion dollars, because it exonerated the Sacklers from any future lawsuits from the victims.
The new agreement “does not offer the Sacklers this automatic protection, but provides consensual exemptions in exchange for payments the Sacklers will make” over a fifteen-year period.
The target of a barrage of lawsuits, Purdue declared bankruptcy in 2019, but its bankruptcy plan was rejected several times by the courts. This led the company to appeal to the Washington Supreme Court.
Major drug distributors such as CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, a subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis and consulting firm McKinsey have also been sued for their role in the crisis.
