Columbus joins state opioid settlement against 3 distributors

COLUMBUS — Columbus officials say the city will join in approving a massive state settlement of about $809 million with three major drug distributors that were sued for their part in perpetuating the deadly opioid epidemic.

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein jointly announced Thursday the city would join the settlement through the “Oneohio” plan that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Gov. Mike Dewine unveiled in March 2020 to settle their litigation against the pharmaceutical industry.

“The opioid crisis is worsening, and Ohioans need help now,” Klein said in a written statement. “No amount would replace the lives lost to this epidemic, but banding together with other communities across the state will allow us to secure the critical resources we need to continue battling this crisis here in Columbus.”

Under the unified damages settlement terms, the three distributors — Dublin-based Cardinal Health; Mckesson, of Irving, Texas; and Amerisourcebergen, of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania — would shell out about $809 million to Ohio alone that would be directed to treatment and prevention programs for opioid addiction in participating cities and counties.

City Council will have to approve the settlement, but council has already given authority to Klein’s office to act on its behalf to make settlement decisions, a spokeswoman told The Dispatch.

The amount the city expects to receive through the settlement was not made available.

“While there is no amount of money that will heal those who lost a loved one to addiction, this settlement will help us get more people into treatment and increase prevention efforts,” Ginther said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to a collaborative use of these funds to help our region recover from the trauma that the over-prescription of opioids caused our community.”

The city’s announcement Thursday came hours after Franklin County commissioners officially signed off on its part of the tentative settlement, which would result in the county receiving an estimated $8 million-plus of that approximately $809 million state total, plus another nearly $31 million that would be directed to the central Ohio region.

The deadline for Ohio communities to agree to participate in the joint settlement plan was Friday.

It would take 95% of potential Ohio litigants to opt-in to the deal for it to move forward. Once it’s a done-deal, those funds would be distributed based on the number of overdose deaths, addiction rates and other factors within any given community.

If finalized, the agreement would resolve investigations and lawsuits against those three largest opioid distributors. Under terms Yost announced last month, the three would pay $21 billion nationally over the next 17 years, with about $809 million of that total directed to Ohio, where according to Yost’s office more than 23,700 Ohioans died between 2010 and 2019 as a result of opioid overdoses.

Potential settlement funds would be routed to local governments, Yost’s office said, and would also be used to endow nonprofit foundations with the mission to fight opioid abuse and provide treatment funds. As part of the agreement, distributors will undergo mandated industry reforms.

At the time the settlement agreement was first announced, it was believed that a deal with the opioid maker and three distributors could exceed $1 billion.