OxyContin-Maker Purdue Inks $4.5B Opioid Epidemic Settlement With 15 States

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Purdue Pharma, along with the Sackler family who owns the embattled drug company, have reportedly agreed to pay $4.5 billion to fifteen states in an opioid settlement reached Wednesday.  

The states that agreed to the opioid epidemic settlement with Purdue include Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These states, along with 10 others who have not yet reached an agreement, did not join an earlier settlement with 24 states prior to a bankruptcy announcement made by Purdue and the Sackler family in 2019.  

The $4.5 billion settlement comes after hundreds of calls and meetings between the states and representatives for Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, say court documents.  

Three states who signed on the latest agreement, Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota, announced Thursday that they will use their share of the $4.5 billion settlement to fund opioid treatment and abatement programs. They also pledged to expose Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family’s role in fueling the opioid epidemic.  

“This deal gets one of the nation’s most harmful drug dealers out of the opioid business,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to Law360.  

“They cannot get away with this so they can do it all over again,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison reportedly said of the deal.  

Purdue has also agreed to release tens of millions of new documents to shed further light on the opioid epidemic that has raged across the nation for decades. The Sackler family has also reportedly given up naming rights connected to their charitable contributions, as well as authority over their $175 million family charitable trust fund under the terms of the deal. The family will also pay an additional $50 million.  

Purdue and the Sackler family were besieged by claims that their blockbuster opioid drug, OxyContin, fueled a nationwide drug epidemic.  

In 2017, the State of Oklahoma went after Purdue and a number of other pharmacy companies alleging they “executed massive and unprecedented marketing campaigns” that misrepresented the risks of opioid-based drugs, netting a $270 million settlement in 2019.  

Additionally, Purdue paid an undisclosed amount to resolve the claims in nearly 3,000 individual lawsuits alleging that their OxyContin and other opioid products were irresponsibly produced. 

The $4.5 billion opioid epidemic settlement agreement comes as Purdue will submit its Chapter 11 plan to bankruptcy court in August. 

“This resolution to the mediation is an important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need. The Sackler family hopes these funds will help achieve that goal,” a representative for the Sackler family said in an email to Law360.  

For its part, representatives for Purdue Pharma asserted that the settlement builds on previous agreements.  

“We will continue to work to build even greater consensus for our plan of reorganization, which would transfer billions of dollars of value into trusts for the benefit of the American people and direct critically-needed medicines and resources to communities and individuals nationwide who have been affected by the opioid crisis,” said Perdue Pharma reportedly stated in a Law360 email.  

Were you affected by the opioid epidemic? What do you think of the $4.5 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma? Tell us in the comment section below.  

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