Johnson & Johnson to stop selling opiates in the United States

The American laboratory Johnson & Johnson will suspend its sales of opiates in the United States as part of a $ 230 million settlement with New York State, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Saturday.

The New York deal spares J&J a lawsuit on Long Island, but the group remains facing other legal proceedings nationwide, including a pending trial in California.

The group will spread the payment of $ 230 million over nine years, the prosecutor said in a statement. The lab could also pay an additional $ 30 million in the first year if the state's executive chamber enacted new legislation creating an opioid settlement fund.

“The opioid epidemic has wreaked havoc in countless communities across New York State and across the country, leaving millions of people still addicted to opiates which are dangerous and deadly,” Ms. James said in the press release. "Johnson & Johnson has helped fuel this crisis, but today they are pledging to quit the opioid industry, not just in New York City, but across the country," she added. J&J will no longer manufacture or sell opiates in the United States.

The $ 230 million is intended to fund prevention, treatment and education efforts for the dangers of these substances in New York State. Johnson & Johnson, Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies and distributors are accused of encouraging doctors to over-prescribe these drugs - initially reserved for patients with particularly serious cancers - even when they knew they generated serious addictions.

Since 1999, this dependence has pushed many consumers of these drugs towards increasingly strong doses and towards illicit drugs such as heroin or fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid and therefore at high risk of fatal overdose.

About 500,000 people have died from overdoses in the United States since that date.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country's leading public health agency, estimate that about 90,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2020, three-quarters of which involved opiates.