Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to pay $7.4 billion

The American laboratory Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, which owns it, have reached an agreement with 15 American states under which they will have to pay a total of 7.4 billion dollars (7.09 billion euros) for their role in the opioid crisis.

According to a press release, Thursday, January 23, from Letitia James, Attorney General of the State of New York, the agreement – ​​which must still be validated by a court – provides for the family to pay up to 6.5 billion dollars on fifteen years old; and the pharmaceutical laboratory, 900 million dollars.

“The Sackler family relentlessly sought to profit at the expense of vulnerable patients and played a central role in starting and spreading the opioid epidemic.”commented Letitia James, quoted in the press release. “I will continue to hunt down the companies that caused this crisis”she added, specifying that she had recovered at this stage more than 3 billion dollars for the State of New York as part of agreements with other protagonists. The compensation announced Thursday must be used to finance programs to combat addiction and detoxification cures.

Purdue Pharma manufactured the painkiller OxyContin, the overprescription of which is widely considered to have triggered the opioid crisis in the United States. The laboratory abandoned opioids in 2018.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), more than 700,000 people died in the country between 1999 and 2022 from an overdose linked to taking opioids, obtained by prescription or illegally. For the first time since 2018, the number of deaths linked to opioids (mainly fentanyl) decreased slightly in 2023 in the country.

An avalanche of lawsuits

In June 2024, the United States Supreme Court blocked an agreement concluded in 2022 with the 50 American states relating to the payment of some $6 billion, because it exempted the Sacklers from any future lawsuits from victims.

Targeted by an avalanche of lawsuits, Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy in 2019, but it encountered several court rejections of its bankruptcy plan. This led him to appeal to the Supreme Court in Washington. The Sacklers are accused of having aggressively promoted OxyContin while knowing of its highly addictive nature, which earned them tens of billions of dollars.

Large drug distributors such as the CVS, Walgreens and Walmart chains, as well as a subsidiary of the French advertising giant Publicis and the consulting firm McKinsey, have also been prosecuted for their role in this crisis.