BATON ROUGE, LA –
Attorney General Jeff Landry today announced an historic $26 billion agreement
with the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors and another company
which manufactured and marketed opioids. It is expected to help bring
much-needed relief to families throughout Louisiana struggling with opioid
addiction.
“Today is a great day in our fight to hold accountable
those who have stoked the fire of the opioid crisis,” said Attorney General
Landry, who helped lead state negotiations along with the attorneys general of
North Carolina, Tennessee, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The agreement resolves investigations and litigation
with Cardinal, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Johnson & Johnson over the
companies’ roles in creating and fueling the opioid epidemic. The agreement
also requires significant industry changes that will help prevent this type of
crisis from happening again.
“Thousands of our neighbors have buried their loved ones
throughout the opioid epidemic, and countless other families in Louisiana
remain devastated by the crisis,” continued Attorney General Landry. “They deserve
our State’s commitment to treating the addicted and protecting the public from
this horrific plague; and I am proud to have delivered this great agreement to
them.”
The agreement would resolve the claims of both states
and local governments across the country, including the nearly 4,000 that have
filed lawsuits in federal and state courts. Following today’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 their local governments
will receive maximum payments if each state and its local governments join
together in support of the agreement.
Louisiana is anticipated to receive more than $325
million. “It is our objective that every nickel of this settlement goes to
treating those in need – mitigating the damage done to our citizens,” concluded
Attorney General Landry. “We will continue working with the legal
representatives of the political subdivisions involved in this litigation to
make this happen.”
Funding Overview:
- The
three distributors collectively will pay up to $21 billion over 18 years.
- Johnson
& Johnson will pay up to $5 billion over nine years with up to $3.7
billion paid during the first three years.
- The
total funding distributed will be determined by the overall degree of
participation by both litigating and non-litigating state and local governments.
- The
substantial majority of the money is to be spent on opioid treatment and
prevention.
- Each
state’s share of the funding has been determined by agreement among the
states using a formula that takes into account the population of the state
and the impact of the crisis on the state – the number of overdose deaths,
the number of residents with substance use disorder, and the number of
opioids prescribed.
Injunctive Relief
Overview:
- The
10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Cardinal,
McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen to:
- Establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to
provide all three distributors and state regulators with aggregated data
and analytics about where drugs are going and how often, eliminating
blind spots in the current systems used by distributors.
- Use data-driven systems to detect suspicious opioid
orders from customer pharmacies.
- Terminate customer pharmacies’ ability to receive
shipments, and report those companies to state regulators, when they show
certain signs of diversion.
- Prohibit shipping of and report suspicious opioid
orders.
- Prohibit sales staff from influencing decisions
related to identifying suspicious opioid orders.
- Require senior corporate officials to engage in
regular oversight of anti-diversion efforts.
- The
10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Johnson &
Johnson to:
- Stop selling opioids.
- Not fund or provide grants to third parties for
promoting opioids.
- Not lobby on activities related to opioids.
- Share clinical trial data under the Yale University
Open Data Access Project.
This settlement comes as a
result of investigations by state attorneys general into whether the three
distributors fulfilled their legal duty to refuse to ship opioids to pharmacies
that submitted suspicious drug orders and whether Johnson & Johnson misled
patients and doctors about the addictive nature of opioid drugs.