Subscribe
A Walgreens in Millburn, N.J on May 14, 2023. Attorneys announced that Walgreens agreed to pay $500 million to New Mexico to settle claims over lax opioid prescription oversight chronicled during a two-month bench trial late last year.

A Walgreens in Millburn, N.J on May 14, 2023. Attorneys announced that Walgreens agreed to pay $500 million to New Mexico to settle claims over lax opioid prescription oversight chronicled during a two-month bench trial late last year. (Wikimedia Commons)

States and local governments will receive an additional $18.75 billion from pharmacy chains and drug manufacturers to settle lawsuits over their roles in flooding the country with painkillers — money meant to help communities still grappling with an unparalleled addiction and overdose crisis, attorneys announced Friday.

The settlements are to be paid by drug manufacturers Allergan and Teva, plus CVS and Walgreens. The settlements also include Walmart, which is expected to finalize its deal shortly.

The agreements emerge more than a year after pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, along with drug distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, agreed to pay about $26 billion to settle. In total, more than $50 billion has been allocated to settle waves of lawsuits meant to hold accountable companies that failed to stop the flow and abuse of prescription pills in the 2000s and 2010s.

In recent years, the drug crisis has increasingly been propelled by synthetic drugs, chiefly illicit fentanyl manufactured in secret labs in Mexico and smuggled into the United States to devastating effect. Federal officials estimated that more than 109,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2022, with most deaths linked to opioids.

In addition to nearly every state, more than 3,400 government bodies — counties, cities and other local entities — opted into the latest round of settlements finalized this week. The distribution of the funds was calculated by population adjusted for the impact of the crisis.

Apart from the wider national settlement, attorneys on Friday announced that Walgreens agreed to pay $500 million to New Mexico to settle claims over lax opioid prescription oversight chronicled during a two-month bench trial late last year. The same case resulted in $274 million in settlements from Albertsons, CVS, Kroger and Walmart.

State attorneys general said the latest tranche of settlement money will begin to flow later this year: For example, Illinois will receive $518 million, Minnesota $208 million and Nebraska more than $65 million, all spread out over 15 years.

Under the agreements negotiated by a committee of plaintiffs’ attorneys and state attorneys general, at least 85 percent of the money must go toward abating the drug crisis. The companies are required to change their practices to protect the public, including adopting tighter monitoring systems for pharmacies to allow them to flag suspicious orders that might lead to pills being diverted to black markets.

Teva, in a news release, said it has now resolved its opioid litigation with all 50 states and 99 percent of other governments.

“While the final agreement includes no admission of wrongdoing, it remains in the company’s best interest - and in the interest of those impacted by the opioid crisis - to conclude this settlement and for Teva to continue to focus on the patients it serves every day,” the company said.

Pensacola, Fla., attorney Peter J. Mougey, who is part of the team spearheading the complex settlement talks, said the money is no compensation for the hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths during the past two decades but “will throw a desperately needed lifeline to the problem of future addictions.”

Elected officials, public health officials and addiction specialists have said they hope the national opioids settlement money will help communities deal with the ongoing crisis, although strategies and implementation of the programs vary state to state.

Those approaches include stocking up on the opioid antidote naloxone and underwriting grass-roots “harm reduction” groups that aim to minimize the effects drugs inflict on users. The settlement money will also be used to pay for fentanyl awareness campaigns and to equip police with technology to combat drug trafficking. Rhode Island has allotted money to create an “overdose prevention center” where users can ingest drugs under the supervision of staff trained to prevent overdoses, a concept that has been met with resistance across the country.

Teva, which struck a separate deal with Nevada this week in advance of a trial, will pay the state $193 million over 20 years. The company said it expects to expand shipments to states of the generic version of the overdose-reversing spray Narcan.

In Kentucky, where more than 2,200 people died of overdoses in 2021, the state is slated to receive roughly $840 million in combined settlements. A state commission had already awarded more than $8 million to groups that work to reduce the harm from opioids and ones that specialize in addiction treatment and recovery. One proposal would pay for research into the plant ibogaine, which could be used for psychedelic-assisted therapy to curb addiction.

Mike O’Connell, county attorney in Jefferson County, Ky., which includes Louisville, said money could even go to helping people who are struggling with addiction put roofs over their heads.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of this money go to affordable housing geared to helping people with addiction,” said O’Connell, who lost his 33-year-old son, Matt, to an overdose in 2014.

The national litigation remains ongoing with other defendants. Tribal nations have reached their own settlements with pharmaceutical companies, while some cases are ongoing. The Cherokee Nation this week sued pharmaceutical distributor Morris & Dickson over its alleged role in the opioid crisis in Oklahoma; the company is also facing revocation by the Drug Enforcement Administration of its license to distribute controlled substances.

Sign Up for Daily Headlines

Sign up to receive a daily email of today's top military news stories from Stars and Stripes and top news outlets from around the world.

Sign Up Now