A $6 billion multi-state settlement agreement with Purdue Pharma moved forward this week following an appeals court ruling that also shields the company’s owners from future civil lawsuits. When approved, the settlement would bring an additional $500 million to California to combat the opioid crisis.
The settlement is one in a series of payouts agreed to by pharmaceutical companies in the aftermath of an epidemic of opioid addiction that has killed more than 560,000 people since 1999, in many cases due to deceptive marketing campaigns to boost sales and failures to prevent rampant addiction.
California is already getting an estimated $2.05 billion through 2038 from agreements with Janssen Pharmaceuticals and the “big three” distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health.
The majority of those funds are earmarked for counties and cities to fund prevention and treatment programs, like the distribution of Naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug, and harm reduction programs. Counties and cities began receiving the first batch of money from those opioid settlements late last year, according to the state Department of Healthcare Services.
Even as significant funding to deal with substance use is now coming in from drug manufacturers, there’s been a shift in drug use away from prescription opioids. Now, the majority of opioid overdose deaths in California involve fentanyl, a synthetic opioid often found in illicit drugs. Statewide,nearly 6,000 people died in California from a fentanyl overdose in 2021 — more than 1,500 in L.A. County.
How is L.A. County responding?
In L.A. County, fentanyl overdose deaths increased more…
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