DOJ announces $8B-plus settlement with OxyContin maker

Preliminary CDC data show that drug overdose deaths, after a brief dip in 2018, hit a record high in 2019, with nearly 72,000 fatalities. The toll continues to climb this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. Opioids, which account for most drug deaths, were involved in two out of every three drug overdose fatalities in 2018, according to the CDC.

Controversy over the agreement: The resolution with the Trump administration also includes a mandate to dissolve Purdue, with the Sacklers relinquishing all ownership and control. The company’s assets, pending the approval of a bankruptcy court, will be redirected to a government-owned “public benefit company” that will still produce OxyContin and opioid addiction treatment.

Last week, 25 state attorneys general wrote a letter urging the Justice Department against making such a move, saying the government shouldn’t benefit from sales of OxyContin, the 25-year-old drug that helped power the addiction crisis. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen defended the plan against those criticisms.

“It was also our judgment on this that while prescription opioids can be abused, diverted, misused in very harmful ways, it’s a prescription pharmaceutical that does have some positive uses, and maintaining supply of those is itself something that could be beneficial,” Rosen told reporters Wednesday.

Rosen declined to say why DOJ didn’t pursue criminal charges against the Sacklers, noting only that the civil resolution doesn’t absolve them from other legal claims.

Purdue will plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government and kickback schemes involving payments to prescribing doctors and an electronic health records company.