The maker of a painkiller seen as one of the chief culprits in the opioid crisis is being accused of causing more than $2 trillion in damages.
Nearly all the states, plus the District of Columbia and territories, made claims against Purdue Pharma totaling $2.156 trillion in connection with the bankruptcy filing the company made last year, according to court documents. The joint filing was made Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York.
Purdue, based in Stamford, Connecticut, is the maker of OxyContin, a long-acting formulation of the opioid painkiller oxycodone. The drug – along with other opioid painkillers marketed by other firms – has been blamed for driving the nationwide opioid crisis that has been going on for more than two decades.
“The opioid epidemic has ravaged this country as a single family has made billions profiting from the destruction it caused,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in an emailed statement. “While [Monday’s] filing may lay out the monetary impact that Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family have had on the United States, this financial toll only accounts for a sliver of the damage inflicted on the American people.”
Purdue could not be immediately reached for comment.
Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year in an effort to block more than 2,000 lawsuits from municipal, state and Native American tribal governments. However, state attorneys general at the time balked at the move amid reports that the Sackler family, which owns the drugmaker, had wired about $1 billion to bank accounts located overseas.
The bankruptcy filing was part of a settlement the company proposed, which would also include the Sacklers contributing $3 billion of their own money, while Purdue would put all of its assets into a trust or similar entity established to benefit claimants and the public at large. Meanwhile, a new company would be established that would market Purdue’s products under certain restrictions and contribute doses of medications used to treat opioid addiction and reverse overdose, at low or no cost.
Purdue is one of numerous drugmakers whose products have been implicated in the opioid crisis, a list that also includes firms such as Mallinckrodt and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, as well as the major pharmaceutical distributors and several large retail pharmacy chains.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 15,000 people died from overdoses on prescription opioids in 2018. Starting in the late 1990s, several drug companies began heavily marketing opioid painkillers, assuring physicians that patients would not become addicted to them. But the drugs turned out to in fact be highly addictive, and the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 10.3 million people misused prescription opioids in 2018, while 2 million were seen as having an opioid use disorder.
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