State gets $300M in drug suit
Historic $26 billion agreement with distributors, manufacturer will direct funds to fight addictions
Connecticut will receive more than $300 million to fight the opioid epidemic as part of a historic $26 billion deal that settles thousands of lawsuits brought against the nation’s major pharmaceutical distributors and opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.
The deal is among the largest cash settlements in United States history — second only to the Big Tobacco settlement reached in the late 1990s — and will direct billions toward opioid abatement, from expanding access to opioid use disorder prevention measures to treatment and recovery efforts.
Major pharmaceutical distributors Mckesson Corp., Cardinal Health and Amerisourcebergen, as well as Johnson & Johnson, will pay out the funds out over 18 years. The agreement resolves more than 3,000 lawsuits brought against the companies by states, cities, counties and other jurisdictions across the country.
“The distributors play a central role in this crisis because these three drug distributors distribute almost all the prescription medication that we use in this country,” Attorney General William Tong said at the state Capitol Wednesday afternoon. “Also, Johnson & Johnson, a household name … has been a lead manufacturer of material used in producing opioid pain medications and have themselves produced opioid medications in the past.”
Connecticut will receive the payments spread out over 18
years, with roughly $26 million coming to the state in each of the first three years. Municipalities will receive 15% of the state’s allocation and the funds will be distributed through a state Opioid Recovery & Remediation Fund Advisory Council, administered by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, officials said.
Tong said the state was still finalizing the details of how its portion of the funds will be allocated. But the money is earmarked for prevention, treatment and recovery efforts and will go toward “helping victims and families and stopping the creation of new victims and new families impacted by this,” he said. Once the deal is finalized, Connecticut could expect to see the first round of funds next April.
“This money is going to go to treatment and prevention,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “It’s not going to be siphoned off.”
The agreement is contingent on the support of at least 44 states, 95% of cities, counties and other entities suing the companies and 90% of non-litigating jurisdictions. States have 30 days and local governments in the participating states will have up to 150 days to sign on to the deal.
Tong said he was confident that other states and municipalities will join the critical mass needed for the settlement to be finalized.
The settlement arrives at a time when opioid overdose deaths are at a record high in the United States. Overdose deaths soared to an estimated 93,000 last year, a 29% increase from the high of 72,000 drug overdose deaths in the previous year. Overall, the opioid epidemic is estimated to have cost the United States more than $1 trillion from 2001 to 2017.
In Connecticut, opioid overdose deaths rose 14.6% last year and have largely continued to rise in the first half of this year, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Maria Coutant Skinner, executive director of the Mccall Center for Behavioral Health, an addiction treatment center based in Torrington, said that no amount of money could repair the lives shattered by the opioid crisis.
Yet the settlement funds will be critical, she said, in supporting the substance use disorder community, which “for far too long has been invisible,” and bolstering an “under-resourced” system of prevention and treatment.
“There’s a long list of initiatives that every single person who sits in a seat like mine has, shovel-ready to go, if only we had the dollars to be able to do it,” she said. “Today, that changes.”
The announcement of Connecticut’s settlement was personal to Paige Niver, whose daughter was 14 when she was prescribed opioids after a bicycle accident, launching years of struggles with a substance use disorder.
At the Capitol, Niver recalled that at the time, her daughter raised concerns about the amount of drugs she had been prescribed. But when Niver called her doctor about it, she was told to increase her daughter’s dosage.
“It turns out that the day of the bicycle accident was the last day I was going to see my daughter sober until she was 20 years old,” she said.
Since then, Niver said, her daughter “climbed a large mountain” and received medical care that put her on the path to recovery. Niver said she hoped that the settlement would help more families secure the support that they need.
“I’m really glad that the money is going to go to people who are sick and still suffering because that treatment saved my daughter’s life,” she said.