Weekly Mass Torts Bulletin 2023-January-9

4 New Opioid Settlements Worth $226M For Oklahoma

According to the attorney general, Oklahoma has reached settlement agreements worth more than $226 million with three large drugstore chains and one opioid manufacturer.

Oklahoma has collected more than $900 million from opioid producers and distributors to help solve the state's opioid issue, including fresh settlements with pharmaceutical Allergan and drugstore chains CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart.

Oklahoma families have experienced indescribable anguish as a result of the opioid crisis, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Oklahoma residents. More than 3,000 Oklahomans perished from opioid overdoses between 2016 and 2020.

Almost all of the settlement payments must be spent to assist Oklahoma to recover from the impacts of the opioid crisis, including prevention and treatment programmes.

In November, three of the major U.S. drugstore chains negotiated $13 billion in settlements with states over the opioid toll. CVS Health and Walgreen Co. each pay approximately $5 billion under separate agreements, while Walmart pays more than $3 billion. Nobody has confessed any wrongdoing.

The settlements are the latest in a series of agreements reached by state and municipal governments with businesses like drugmakers, distribution firms, and even a consulting firm, even as some litigation over how the medications are advertised and sold continues. The entire amount of proposed and approved settlements currently exceeds $50 billion. Unlike cigarette business settlements in the 1990s, the majority of the money must be spent to combat the opioid problem, which has been connected to over 500,000 fatalities in the United States since 2000.

Oklahoma was the first state, under the then-Attorney General, to achieve a $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin. The majority of that funding went toward establishing the National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa.

Oklahoma was also the first state to go to trial in a case against opioid manufacturers accused of contributing to the country's opioid problem. In 2019, a district court judge ruled that Johnson & Johnson and its Belgium-based subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals violated the state's public nuisance legislation, and ordered the firm to pay the state $465 million to assist solve the state's opioid issue. That verdict, however, was later overturned by the state Supreme Court, which decided that the trial court judge misinterpreted the state's public nuisance legislation.

California To Get $470M From CVS In Opioid Settlement

A multistate settlement with CVS over charges that the drugstore corporation contributed to the country's opioid problem is likely to pay California around $470 million.

Last year, CVS Health and Walgreens agreed to pay approximately $5 billion each to settle a large number of lawsuits brought by the accompaniment and local governments accusing the chains of bushing prescriptions that should have been flagged as inappropriate, allowing to ammunition a catching that has killed more than half a million Americans over the previous 20 years.

After they accepted the agreements with each enterprise, the money was to be divided among the accommodating states.

The California attorney general said that the year has opened with another victory in the campaign to hold pharmaceutical behemoths accountable for their part in fuelling the opioid crisis. The cash from this adjustment will provide deliver much-needed relief to the communities and will guarantee CVS modifies its business procedures to prevent such a situation from occurring again.

The majority of the proceeds from the adjustment will be used for analysis and accretion casework for those affected by opioid addiction. CVS will be appropriate to apparatus further agent training and analyse possibly fearful prescriptions. Armpit visits and acquiescence reviews will be held accountable by the company's pharmacists.

Earlier in the long-running opioid epidemic in the United States, many people died as a result of complicated prescription medications. As authorities and healthcare professionals approved to make prescription opioids more difficult to bribe and get, many people with opioid-use ataxia switched to heroin. Deaths have risen dramatically in recent years as a result of an abundance of illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

The appointment of the advocate general last month meant that California would get more than $500 million from the Walgreens settlement. The state may also receive $265 million from a related set of cases filed against Walmart.

$6M For UMSL Addiction Science Team To Fight Mo. Opioid Crisis

The Addiction Science Team at the University of Missouri-St. Louis will receive around $6 million to enhance its statewide training and delivery of opioid overdose reversal medicine.

Naloxone, sometimes known as Narcan, is a reversal drug. This funding was provided by the state when it acquired funds from opioid pharmaceutical settlements.

One of the program's directors, a UMSL Associate Professor, stated that it will at least quadruple the number of naloxone doses available and, ideally, the number of lives saved. According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, 2,163 persons died from drug overdoses in Missouri in 2021.

According to the professor, the state needs to enhance harm reduction training and distribution initiatives.

Naloxone is crucial in the procedure. He stated that in addition to obtaining naloxone, they spend time and money distributing it to groups around the state and educating them to utilise it.

He went on to say that they buy both the brand name Narcan, which is a nasal spray that, like Flonase, you just spray up your nose or the nose of someone else. The institution also buys the intramuscular variety, which includes a vial and syringe that may be inserted into anyone's large muscle. Faith, Hope, and Love Worship Center in St. Louis is one of the groups that provide naloxone on a regular basis.

Pastor of Faith, Hope and Love Worship Center said that the volunteers of the center sometimes walk the street and go to places to distribute the spray. She even added that even she has lost her family members to the crisis and the epidemic is still active in the city.