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In all, the settlement could be worth $10 billion or more over time. Most of the money is to be used by state and local governments to counter the crisis, although $750 million is to be distributed to victims of the crisis and their survivors. More than $100 million is being set aside for medical monitoring and payments for children born in withdrawal from opioids, and Native American tribes are in line for more than $150 million. Advocates say the money is essential to stemming the crisis. Overdose deaths have been on the rise in the U.S., exacerbated by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread availability of illicit versions of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
While Sackler family members would be shielded from civil lawsuits, they would not have immunity from criminal charges. There’s no indication any are in the works, but seven Democratic U.S. senators called upon the U.S. Department of Justice last month to consider charges.
Also under the new plan, a longer list of company documents would now be made public. Family members also agreed not to resist if educational and cultural institutions to which they’ve donated want to remove their name.
Another part of the new deal is Thursday’s victim statements from people whose lives were devastated by the crisis, either by losing loved ones or years of their own lives to addiction. The names of the speakers, who will represent millions of people affected by the crisis, have not been announced.
It will be the first opportunity for them to address Sackler family members directly in a public setting. It’s not clear which of the Sacklers will attend, but there are to be at least two of them — and they are not to speak.
Purdue and the Sacklers have long been cast as prime villains in the opioid crisis. The company has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges over the way it promoted and sold its signature painkiller OxyContin, an innovative extended-release opioid painkiller first marketed in 1996.
People discovered they could manipulate the drug to get large doses of opioids at once — something the company eventually took steps to make more difficult.
At the same time, the company was working to persuade doctors to prescribe opioids for more types of pain, including those for which the powerful drugs had previously been considered out of bounds.
Other drugmakers, distributors, marketers and pharmacies involved in the opioid industry have faced similar lawsuits from state and local governments, Native American tribes and other entities.
Last month, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and wholesalers AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson announced they were finalizing settlements worth a combined $26 billion. As in the proposed Purdue settlement, most of that money is required to be used to fight the crisis.
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