In the battle against the opioid crisis, Kentucky made waves earlier this year by proposing to allocate $42 million to investigate ibogaine May 31, 2023, a potentially risky psychedelic that can curb opioid withdrawal and cravings. The state’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission has recently selected Attorney General-elect Russell Coleman’s appointment of Christopher Evans as the…
How fentanyl has transformed the opioid crisis
In the 1990s, growing use of painkillers such as Percocet and Oxycodone helped seed the opioid epidemic. Afterward, demand for heroin increased, exacerbating the problem. More recently, a surge in synthetic opioid fentanyl use has worsened the crisis. According to the CDC, more than 100,000 Americans now die from drug overdoses yearly. Of those, approximately…
Cardinal Health announces $124M settlement of investors’ opioid suit
Cardinal Health directors’ insurers will pay the company $124 million to settle a stockholder derivative action related to the opioid crisis. The company (NYSE: CAH) on July 22 issued a court-authorized notice to alert investors to a settlement hearing to be held on Oct. 4 in U.S. District Court in Southern Ohio. If the settlement…
Teva and Allergan reportedly agree to pay $5B billion to settle opioid allegations
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE:TEVA) and AbbVie unit Allergan Plc (NYSE:ABBV) could pay more than $5 billion in total to settle some 3,500 opioid lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. While the two companies are willing to settle the suits in the consolidated case, the deal has not been finalized. The consolidated case is titled In Re National…
Johnson & Johnson and drug distributors agree to pay $590M in opioid settlement agreement with U.S. tribes
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and its U.S. subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies have reached a $150 million settlement agreement with federally-recognized tribes related to opioid-related claims payable over two years. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division. The settlement notes that American Indians have one of the highest…
Johnson & Johnson reaches opioid settlement with Colorado and Nevada
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) has reached a settlement agreement with Colorado and Nevada to put opioid-related allegations there to bed. Colorado will receive $385 million from Johnson & Johnson and the drug distributors McKesson (NYSE:MCK), AmerisourceBergen (NYSE: ABC) and Cardinal Health (NYSE:CAH). Nevada will receive nearly $285.2 million as part of the overall settlement, which is earmarked…
Cardinal Health docks executive bonuses over opioid costs
Cardinal Health’s board of directors reduced bonus payouts for CEO Mike Kaufmann and his four top-paid executives due to the cost of opioid litigation. After pressure from investors, Cardinal Health (NYSE:CAH) for the first time has disclosed how its board of directors factored the opioid litigation settlement costs into the pay packages of Kaufmann, Chief…
Purdue Pharma boosts opioid lawsuits settlement offer to $4.28 billion
Purdue Pharma has proposed paying an additional approximately $500 million in cash to settle hundreds of thousands of opioid lawsuits. As part of a proposed bankruptcy settlement, the payments would be spaced out over the next decade. The Sackler family that owns the company has earlier agreed to pay an additional $4.2 billion to settle…
McKinsey to pay $573M in opioid settlement
The prestigious consulting firm McKinsey has struck a deal with 47 states over its role in the opioid crisis. Notably, the company had advised OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma (Stamford, Conn.) on “turbocharging” opioid sales. The pharma company had worked with McKinsey for 15 years. The Justice Department concluded that McKinsey helped manage a Purdue Pharma…
COVID-19 forces healthcare industry to get creative when battling opioid crisis
The pandemic has worsened the opioid crisis. In the 12-month period ending in May 2020, the U.S. had 81,000 drug overdoses, with synthetic opioids being the main driver of overdose deaths. That’s the highest number on record, according to provisional data from the CDC. And the volume of overdoses in May was 42% higher than…