Virginia Helps Lead $7.4 Billion National Settlement With Sacklers, Purdue Pharma Over Opioid Crisis

Virginia played a key role in brokering a sweeping $7.4 billion settlement that will permanently sever the Sackler family from pharmaceutical manufacturer Purdue Pharma and ban them from ever marketing opioids in the United States again. It’s the culmination of a long and bitter legal battle over the company’s role in fueling the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Attorney General Jason Miyares announced Monday that Virginia is one of 55 states and territories backing the historic agreement, which would resolve all outstanding litigation against Purdue and its once-powerful owners, the Sacklers. The deal is now headed to bankruptcy court for final approval.

“The Sacklers spent years fueling an epidemic that shattered families, wrecked communities, and cost hundreds of thousands of American lives,” Miyares said in a statement.

“Though no amount of money will ever bring back those we’ve lost or undo the incomprehensible level of harm caused, these settlement funds will be invested in treatment, prevention, and recovery efforts across Virginia, helping our communities heal and saving lives.”

Virginia stands to receive up to $103.8 million over 15 years as part of the agreement, with most of the funds arriving in the first three years. The money will go toward community-based efforts to prevent addiction, expand treatment services and support long-term recovery programs statewide.

The opioid crisis has taken an especially heavy toll in the state. A 2021 Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Department of Health analysis found nearly 150,000 Virginians living with opioid use disorder that year, and “at least six Virginians died of an opioid overdose every day on average.”

By 2022, roughly 1,951 Virginians — more than double the number a decade earlier — died from fentanyl alone.  Still, there’s been recent progress: preliminary CDC data indicate over 1,500 overdose deaths in Virginia in 2024, a decline of 44% in fentanyl-related deaths and the nation’s second-largest drop of its kind, as Miyares reiterated in a recent interview with The Mercury.

The agreement announced Monday comes nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an earlier $6 billion settlement, rejecting legal immunity for the Sackler family. In response, the family increased its financial contribution, helping to pave the way for the larger $7.4 billion proposal that all states and territories have now embraced.

Alongside Virginia, a coalition of states including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia helped negotiate the final terms of the agreement — marking it as the largest opioid-related settlement involving individual defendants to date.

Under the proposed plan, the Sackler family will pay $1.5 billion up front, and Purdue Pharma will contribute about $900 million. Additional payments — $500 million in the second and third years and $400 million in the fourth — will follow.

Once finalized, the settlement will dissolve the Sacklers’ ownership of Purdue and prohibit them from making, selling, or marketing opioids in the U.S.

The litigation stems from Purdue’s development and aggressive promotion of OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller introduced in the 1990s.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after facing thousands of lawsuits accusing it of downplaying the drug’s addictive properties while reaping billions in profit. The lawsuits argued that Purdue and the Sacklers knowingly contributed to one of the deadliest drug epidemics in American history.

“This is a critical milestone,” Purdue Pharma said in a statement Monday. “Today’s announcement of unanimous support among the states and territories is a critical milestone towards confirming a Plan of Reorganization that will provide billions of dollars to compensate victims, abate the opioid crisis, and deliver opioid use disorder and overdose rescue medicines that will save American lives.”

The bankruptcy court is expected to hold a hearing on the agreement in the coming days. If approved, the settlement will mark the latest in a series of major opioid-related legal wins for the Virginia Office of the Attorney General, which has now secured more than $1.1 billion in total opioid settlements.

by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury

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