Accused of fueling the opioid crisis ravaging the United States, the Johnson & Johnson laboratory and three large American drug distributors have agreed to pay $ 26 billion to settle thousands of disputes, the prosecutor of the United States announced on Wednesday. New York State.
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Johnson & Johnson lab agreed to pay $ 5 billion over nine years, and distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, $ 21 billion over 18 years, to end nearly 4,000 lawsuits brought by dozens of US states and local communities, as part of a
“historic”
amicable agreement
, said the prosecutor in a press release.
The opioid crisis, sparked by the aggressive promotion of pain-relieving drugs such as oxycodone in the 1990s, has claimed more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the United States over the past 20 years.