Credit: (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)A manufacturer of generic opioid painkillers agreed to pay $450 million as part of a multistate settlement, New Jersey’s acting attorney general announced Monday.
In addition to the money, to be paid over the next decade, manufacturer Endo said it would turn over extensive records related to marketing opioids. The settlement also bans the company from ever again marketing its opioid products. This is the latest in a string of multistate settlements with drug manufacturers and others in the pharmaceutical industry.
“The Attorney General’s Office is committed to holding accountable those who have fueled the opioid epidemic, which has destroyed the lives of millions of American families, including in New Jersey,” said acting Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin. “This settlement cannot bring back those we have lost to the opioid crisis, but we can put these settlement funds back into the communities that have suffered most to provide needed resources that will help with prevention, treatment and recovery.”
The agreement settles allegations that Endo, an Ireland-based drug manufacturer with its United States headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, increased opioid sales using misleading marketing that overstated the benefits of the drugs while downplaying the risk of addiction. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week in the Southern District of New York, according to the attorney general’s office. The company’s bankruptcy filing showed assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion, according to Reuters.
Earlier settlements
“Although there is no way to quantify the daily suffering and long-term harm caused by Endo, the Endo settlement funds will provide financial resources necessary to combat the far-reaching effects of illegal opioid marketing,” said Kelly Levy, acting director of the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator for Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies. “We are committed to using these funds to continue our all-hands on deck approach to lessening the impact the opioid crisis has on the lives of New Jersey residents on a daily basis.”
The news comes after an announcement from the attorney general’s office in February that the state, counties, and municipalities with populations over 10,000 would be receiving over $641 million from the nationwide $26 billion opioid settlement against the pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and the three largest pharmaceutical distributors in the country — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. The $641 million in settlement funds will be paid through 2038, the governor’s office said in March.
In June, Platkin announced that the state is set to receive another approximately $30 million as part of another multistate opioid settlement agreement with Mallinckrodt PLC, a global pharmaceutical maker. That settlement addresses the company’s role in helping to instigate the national opioid crisis and the majority of the money from it will go toward funding opioid abatement efforts across New Jersey, the state said in June.
Nationwide, lawsuits against opioid manufacturers have continued this summer.
Last month, Teva Pharmaceuticals, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of generic opioids, announced a settlement in principle worth up to $4.25 billion with 2,500 local governments, states and tribes over the company’s role in the opioid epidemic, according to The New York Times. Teva produced far more prescription opioids at the height of the epidemic than big-name manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma.
And last week, a federal judge in Ohio ordered three of the country’s biggest pharmacy chains, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, to pay $650.5 million to two Ohio counties for their role in enhancing the opioid epidemic, The New York Times reported.
