CHICKASHA — The City Council voted recently to join national opioid settlements negotiated with drugmakers Teva and Allergan and the pharmacies of Walmart, CVS and Walgreens.
Municipalities such as Chickasha, which are subdivisions of the State of Oklahoma, are eligible to participate in the settlements.
The subdivision participation rate will be used to determine whether the number of signatories for each deal is “sufficient for the settlement to move forward, and whether a state earns its maximum potential payment under the settlement.”
CVS and Walgreens have tentatively agreed to pay a combined $10 billion to settle lawsuits brought by states and local governments alleging the retailers mishandled prescriptions of opioid painkillers.
Walmart has tentatively agreed to pay $3 billion to settle similar lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. The agreement won’t be finalized unless enough states, counties and cities agree to the terms, Bloomberg reported.
The opioid settlement proposed by Israeli drug manufacturer Teva Pharmaceutical Industries – $4.25 billion paid out over 13 years – has received support from 48 states and will move forward, according to an announcement issued on Jan. 9, 2023. The only two holdouts were New Mexico and Nevada.
The settlement will resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits over the marketing of opioid painkillers and will include up to $1.2 billion of Teva’s generic version of the overdose reversal drug Narcan. The agreement does not include an admission of wrongdoing; Teva said the settlement is “in the company’s best interest.”
Allergan, a subsidiary of AbbVie, will pay $2.37 billion to resolve more than 2,500 opioid-related lawsuits brought by states, local governments and tribes across the nation.
Teva in 2016 purchased Allergan’s generic drug portfolio. Both drugmakers sold branded as well as generic opioid painkillers.
Litigation over opioids began in 2017 and reportedly has yielded more than $40 billion in settlements from drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains, including Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of the opioid pain reliever OxyContin, and Johnson & Johnson.
Johnson & Johnson and three major drug distributors – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson – negotiated a $26 billion settlement last year to resolve more than 3,000 lawsuits by states, counties and other local governments that they helped fuel the opioid crisis. J&J will contribute $5 billion over nine years, and the distributors will pay up to $21 billion over 18 years.
None of the companies admitted wrongdoing, but said the settlement was “a key milestone toward achieving broad resolution” of opioid claims “and delivering meaningful relief to communities.”
More than 932,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose, according to data compiled by the federal government.