J&J, firms reach $26B deal with states to end some opioid lawsuits
After two years of wrangling, the country’s three major drug distributors and a pharmaceutical giant have reached a $26 billion deal with states that would release some of the biggest companies in the industry from all legal liability in the opioid epidemic, a decadeslong public health crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The announcement was made Wednesday by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general.
The offer will now go out to every state and municipality in the country for approval.
If enough of them formally sign on to it, billions of dollars from the companies could begin to be released to help communities pay for addiction treatment and prevention services and other steep financial costs of the epidemic.
In return, the states and cities would drop thousands of lawsuits against the companies and pledge not to bring any future action.
The settlement binds only these four companies — the drug distributors Cardinal Health, Amerisourcebergen, Mckesson and Johnson & Johnson — leaving thousands of other lawsuits against many other pharmaceutical defendants, including manufacturers and drugstore chains, in the mammoth nationwide litigation still unresolved.
According to federal data, from 1999 to 2019, 500,000 people died from overdoses to prescription and street opioids. Overdose deaths from opioids hit a record high in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month.
The agreement was presented by attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
The states and the District of Columbia will now have 30 days to closely review the agreement, including how much each would be paid over 17 years.
Outrage in Liverpool:
Civic leaders in Liverpool expressed outrage Wednesday after the English port city was stripped of its World Heritage status by the U.N.’S culture organization.
UNESCO’S World Heritage Committee voted in a secret ballot to remove the designation because of developments in the city center and on its historic River Mersey waterfront. The committee said the projects, including a planned new stadium for soccer team Everton, were “detrimental to the site’s authenticity and integrity” and had caused “irreversible loss of attributes.”
Liverpool was one of the world’s busiest ports in the 18th and 19th centuries, growing prosperous from trade in goods and — until the trade in humans outlawed by Britain in 1807 — slaves. The docks declined and became derelict in the 20th century, but have been restored with museums, shops, bars, restaurants and new housing developments, making Liverpool a symbol of urban renewal.
The city that gave birth to The Beatles was added to UNESCO’S World Heritage list in 2004, joining sites including India’s Taj Mahal, Egypt’s pyramids and the Tower of London.
But it was placed on the organization’s heritage in danger list in 2012 amid concerns that modern development was marring the docklands’ historic character.
Weinstein plea: Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday to four counts of rape and seven other sexual assault counts.
Sheriff ’s deputies brought the 69-year-old convicted rapist into court in a wheelchair. Attorney Mark Werksman entered the plea for the disgraced movie mogul a day after Weinstein was extradited to California from New York, where he was serving a 23-year prison term.
Weinstein’s indictment involves five women in incidents spanning from 2004 to 2013.
A New York jury found Weinstein guilty of raping an aspiring actress in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel room and forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment.
Flooding in Europe: Germany’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a roughly $472 million package of immediate
aid for flood victims and vowed to start quickly on rebuilding devastated areas, a task whose cost is expected to be well into the billions.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said the package, financed half by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s federal government and half by Germany’s state governments, to help people deal with the immediate aftermath of last week’s flooding would increase if more money is needed.
“We will do what is necessary to help everyone as quickly as possible,” Scholz said.
At least 171 people were killed in Germany, well over half of them in Ahrweiler county, near Bonn, when small rivers swelled quickly into raging torrents on Wednesday and Thursday following persistent downpours.
Flooding in China: China’s military has blasted a dam to release floodwaters threatening
one of its most heavily populated provinces, as the death toll in widespread flooding rose to at least 25.
The dam operation was carried out late Tuesday night in the city of Luoyang, just as severe flooding overwhelmed the Henan provincial capital of Zhengzhou, trapping residents in the subway system and stranding them at schools, apartments and offices.
Another seven people were reported missing, provincial officials said.
Vaccine production: A South African firm will begin producing the Pfizer-biontech COVID-19 vaccine, the first time that the shot will be produced in Africa, Pfizer announced Wednesday.
The Biovac Institute based in Cape Town will manufacture the vaccine for distribution across Africa, a move that should help address the continent’s desperate need for more vaccine doses amid a recent surge of cases.
Biovac will receive large batch ingredients for the vaccine from Europe and will blend the components, put them in vials and package them for distribution. The production will begin in 2022 with a goal of reaching more than 100 million finished doses annually. Biovac’s production of doses will be distributed among the 54 countries of Africa.
The development is “a critical step” in increasing African’s access to an effective COVID-19 vaccine, Biovac chief executive Dr. Morena Makhoana said.
For its mass inoculation drive, South Africa is relying on the Pfizer vaccine and has purchased 40 million doses, which are arriving in weekly deliveries.
Vaccination levels are low across Africa, with less than 2% of the continent’s population of 1.3 billion having received at least one shot, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.