Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Drain, based in White Plains, New York, signed off on OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s $10 billion reorganization plan that will settle thousands of lawsuits against the company over its role in fueling the opioid epidemic.
The settlement will compel the members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, to contribute at least $4.5 billion over nine years to the settlement fund in exchange for immunity in a wide range of civil lawsuits against the individual members over Purdue-related issues. This was a sticking point for nine state attorneys general who argued the final deal was too easy on the Sacklers, who have not admitted any wrongdoing.
PURDUE PHARMA AND STATES AGREE TO $4.5 BILLION OXYCONTIN SETTLEMENT
“This is a bitter result,” Drain said, according to NPR. “I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties have liability for those [opioid OxyContin] claims. … I would have expected a higher settlement.”
Washington, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia jointly filed their objection to the plan in July, arguing that the bankruptcy court does not have the authority to prevent attorneys general from enforcing state law, including the decision to pursue members of the family who are not filing for bankruptcy protection.
“This settlement plan allows the Sacklers to walk away as billionaires with a legal shield for life,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said last month.
The Sacklers will relinquish control of Purdue Pharma, which will be restructured into a new company overseen by an independent board of trustees. Profits from the opiate OxyContin as well as the overdose-reversal drug Naloxone will be routed to trusts through which states, municipalities, tribes, and more parties will have access to funding for addiction prevention and treatment programs.
Even without Purdue Pharma to run, the Sacklers will still be extraordinarily wealthy. A summary of the family’s wealth was handed over to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which revealed in April that the family is worth about $11 billion.
“Members of the Sackler family pushed Purdue to use deceptive marketing practices to flood communities with this dangerous painkiller, and now the Sackler family is attempting to use Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to evade individual responsibility for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic,” Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, said at the time.
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Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in 1996, and it was aggressively marketed and highly promoted as a safe, nonaddictive pain reliever for moderate to severe pain. Pharmaceutical sales workers successfully inundated rural communities with the pills by marketing directly to doctors who would benefit financially from over-prescribing the drug. In 2018, for example, healthcare providers in West Virginia wrote over 69 opioid prescriptions for every 100 persons, compared to the national average rate of about 51 prescriptions. By 2004, OxyContin had become a leading drug of abuse in the United States, in part due to over-prescribing
Nearly 500,000 people have died due to opioid overdose from 1999 through 2019. People who become hooked on prescription opioids, often following a medical procedure, usually shift to heroin or other synthetic opioids once they run out of pills. Synthetic opiates such as fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, have caused overdoses to increase drastically since 2013, according to federal data. Now, fentanyl is being detected in other illicit drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine, compounding the risk that the user will die of an overdose.
