US Pharmaceuticals Negotiate $ 26 Billion Deal Over Role In Opioid Crisis

Three of the largest drug distributors and pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson are on the verge of a $ 26 billion settlement that would seal thousands of lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis.

In 2019 alone, about 140 people died each day from opioid overdoses, accounting for more than 70% of drug overdose deaths.

According to

on its website on

Tuesday

, the agreement could be announced this week, although sources familiar with the matter warned that it could still be broken or undergo major changes. The newspaper

reported that involves pact ( in

addition to J & J) to distributors opioid AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, and further comprising 1,000 million dollars in resolving some complaints of the State of New York.

If there is an agreement, a dispute of more than two years with the administrations of 44 states and many other jurisdictions would end, according to several US media reported on Monday. The agreement has been forged between a bipartisan group of more than a dozen attorneys general and attorneys who have represented small towns. One of the milestones of this eventual agreement is that, unlike the previous ones, it has the support of the vast majority of States and includes an amount of 2 billion dollars to pay the plaintiffs' lawyers. The complainant States will have a period of 30 days to decide whether to accept the agreement. Thousands of communities, including cities, counties, and Native American tribes, among others, have also litigated throughout this time.

According to a statement from Johnson & Johnson, in any case, "the agreement does not mean an admission of guilt or crime, the company will continue to defend itself against any lawsuit that is not included in the pact" that is now just being outlined.

The 26,000 million of the agreement includes 21,000 million dollars to be paid by the distributors and 5,000 million dollars that would be paid by Johnson & Johnson.

In 2020, more than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States, an increase of 30% over the 2019 figure, which had already reached its own record, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics. Of the total of 93,000 deaths, about 70,000 were due to opioid overdoses.

The opioid crisis started in the 1990s and, in the opinion of the complainants, it was not something that happened overnight, but was “manufactured” from the beginning.

According to experts, the market launch of OxyContin, an opioid for pain, has been the main culprit of the crisis.

The plaintiffs accuse the pharmaceutical industry of deceiving their customers by marketing opioids with messages that minimized their risks, and the distributors of failing to detect or stop suspicious orders (due to their magnitude or frequency) to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

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