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New York State could get up to $250 million from the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma for opioid recovery programs, as they agreed to a $7.4 billion settlement Thursday over lawsuits concerning the family and company’s role in fueling the opioid crisis.
The new deal is tentative. It is still subject to court approval and requires agreements from all claimants, including thousands of local governments, Native American tribes, around 140,000 individuals and remaining states that haven’t signed on. Aside from New York, 14 states are currently on board, the New York Attorney General’s Office says.
Under the Sacklers’ leadership, Purdue invented, manufactured and aggressively marketed Oxycontin, an extended-release opioid that went to market in 1996 and became the most widely-prescribed medication in a slate of name-brand opioids that contributed to the start of the crisis. Purdue representatives advertised the drug directly to providers, often underplaying the addiction risks it posed and pushing its use for a wide range of ailments. Its proliferation led to the expansion of heroin markets to meet demand from people who became addicted to prescription opioids.
If approved, settlement payments are expected over the next 15 years, with $2.9 billion to be paid out in the first three, the New York AG’s office says. A new board of trustees will also be selected for Purdue by the states participating in the settlement in consultation with the company’s other creditors.
Purdue will also continue to be overseen by a monitor and will be prevented from lobbying or marketing opioids.
“Families throughout New York and across the nation are suffering from the immense pain and loss wrought by the opioid crisis,” says New York AG Letitia James. “The Sackler family relentlessly pursued profit at the expense of vulnerable patients, and played a critical role in starting and fueling the opioid epidemic. While no amount of money will ever fully repair the damage they caused, this massive influx of funds will bring resources to communities in need so that we can heal.
“The Sacklers no longer have control of Purdue and will never be allowed to sell opioids in the United States again. I will continue to go after the companies that caused the opioid epidemic and fight to get justice for those who have suffered.”
With this agreement, James has secured a total of over $3 billion from opioid manufacturers and distributors for their role in the crisis.
Still, the money is a drop in the bucket when put next to the gargantuan financial toll the crisis has had on New York and the nation. In the year 2017 alone, the cost of opioid use disorder and fatal opioid overdoses to the state was over $60 billion, according to a 2021 CDC report. The national cost was more than $1 trillion.
The value of lives lost to overdose was one of the largest components of those costs, the report says, and the 2017 totals come from before the deadliest stretch of the opioid crisis during and following the pandemic, primarily due to overdoses involving fentanyl and its analogs.
This new settlement comes after the Supreme Court shot down a 2021 deal last year that would have required the Sacklers and Purdue to pay $6 billion. That settlement, reached in bankruptcy court in the course of Purdue’s Chapter 11 proceedings, shielded the Sacklers from future lawsuits, and the Supreme Court ruled that they were not entitled to that protection from liability because they did not personally file for bankruptcy.
The Sacklers are not automatically protected from future lawsuits by the new agreement, according to the New York AG’s office. However, an unannounced component of the deal would require claimants, including states and local governments, to set aside as much as $800 million in an account to be used for legal defense by the Sacklers, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The New York AG’s office says the new settlement money would support opioid treatment and recovery programs throughout the state. This may include Monroe County, which has been smacked by the crisis.
In 2023, there were 433 opioid-related overdose deaths countywide, a 30 percent increase from 2022, according to a county medical examiner’s report. This increase was largely driven by a rise in fatalities involving multiple substances—particularly opioids, cocaine and alcohol—and the continued use of fentanyl and its analogs, which were present in 83.4 percent of overdoses in 2023.
Earlier this month, the county announced the creation of an Overdose Fatality Review initiative aimed at tackling the issue.
It will create a multi-disciplinary team to review data related to specific overdose deaths to identify emerging trends and barriers to prevention, according to a statement. Modeled on similar approaches in other public health spheres, it will include representatives from public and mental health care backgrounds, public safety agencies, social service providers and the public.
“Despite aggressive efforts on the part of many government agencies and community organizations, there are still too many people dying from overdoses – be they opioids, fentanyl, or combinations of narcotics and other drugs,” says Monroe County Executive Adam Bello. “This is not just a health problem, or a public safety problem, or a government problem – it is a community crisis, and it will take a comprehensive, sustained and systematic effort to address it.”
Justin O’Connor is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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$250 million? With all the people that have died from the opioid slaughter that has touched every corner of every square mile of our country?
Those pharma thieves have added insult to injury.
Billions of dollars weekly being made while these victims are taken.
It’s a travesty of epic proportions!
Worse is that the FDA hasn’t done a thing about it. I lost a cousin to this plague who did nothing but play soccer and tore her ACL. A few bottles of Oxies and she’s destined for a casket without doing anything but trying to relieve the pain.
When will they learn that it’s a death sentence? Her grandfather got to discover her lifeless body in her room on the floor.
Oh and the $250 mil, her family will never see a dime.
I feel this would really benefit all those that have been put though the ringer because of Oxycontin I speak for myself I almost died from overdose it left a big big stain of anger and depression in my life something that no matter what I do the urge to feel happy is always there and will never be gone this took so much from my life I can never get back my family turned away from me and that alone still hurts I never got to apologize to my mother for being such a failure and not to be able to get clean it wasn’t until she had passed I took a turn for the better part of life but nothing can make me feel whole again this powerful drug ruined my life but I myself should have been strong and said no more years ago.i have been off the drug since 2009