WILMINGTON — Delaware reached a $26 billion settlement with the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors and one of its largest opioid manufacturers Thursday.
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WILMINGTON — Delaware will receive more than $100 million of a $26 billion settlement with the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors and one of its largest opioid manufacturers Thursday.
The agreement resolves investigations and litigation over the role that Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen played in creating and accelerating the opioid crisis.
The $100 million from the settlement – a sum second only to the tobacco master settlement agreement – will be paid over the course of 17 years, with $20 million coming to Delaware in the first year, officials said.
The settlement will resolve claims against the three distributors in Delaware’s pending opioid lawsuit, though claims against other defendants – including Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, and Walgreens – remain ongoing.
Nationwide opioid overdose deaths rose to a record 93,000 last year, a nearly 30% increase over the prior year. In recent years, Delaware has experienced the second-worst rate of overdose deaths in America, after West Virginia.
So far, six months into 2021, Delaware has 204 suspected overdose deaths.
That’s nearly half of the amount of people who died from overdoses in 2020 (447), according to the Division of Forensic Science in the Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
That was a 3.7% increase over the 2019, where there were a total of 431 overdose deaths. It is one of the smallest increases the state has seen in years, said Jill Fredel, director of communications for the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services.
“The total of 447 is still far too many sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, siblings, friends, co-workers and neighbors,” she added. “We know that treatment services for people who are suffering from addiction do work and people can and do live long lives in recovery. At the Department of Health and Social Services, we hope that this additional funding from the settlement will support more Delawareans getting into treatment and beginning their lives in recovery.”
From 2006 to 2012 alone, opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies shipped 276 million prescription opioids – more than 100,000 a day, with the potency of 5.5 tons of morphine – into Delaware. In that period, more than 2 million prescription pills were shipped into Selbyville – a community which was only home to about 2,000 residents.
Attorney General Kathleen Jennings co-led negotiations with a group of states’ attorneys general, and added nearly $4 billion to the settlement agreement since last summer. The agreement also requires significant industry changes that will help prevent this type of crisis from happening again.
“No amount of money can make whole the families who have paid the true costs of the opioid epidemic,” AG Jennings said in a prepared statement. “Delawareans from Selbyville and Seaford to Middletown and Claymont have suffered enormously, all because the world’s largest drug dealers were insatiable in their pursuit of profit. Now communities across this country are struggling to keep up with demand for life-saving treatment, prevention, and abatement. We fought hard for a settlement that helps them do that and that saves lives; now we have it. We are hard at work getting our local partners signed on to this agreement so that we can maximize the amount of money that goes to Delawareans.”
The agreement would resolve the claims of nearly 4,000 states and local governments across the country that have filed lawsuits in federal and state courts.
Following Thursday’s agreement, states have 30 days to sign onto the deal and local governments in the participating states will have up to 150 days to join to secure a critical mass of participating states and local governments. States and local governments will receive maximum payments if each state and its local governments join together in support of the agreement.
Under the settlement agreement:
The agreement also requires significant industry changes designed to help prevent this type of crisis from happening again. The agreement will result in court orders requiring Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen to:
The 10-year agreement will also result in court orders requiring Johnson & Johnson to:
Abatement funds from the settlement will be deposited with Delaware’s newly-established Opioid Settlement Fund Commission and will be managed by an independent, multilateral panel of stakeholders charged with allocating the funds toward abatement, prevention and treatment.