THREE leading American drug distributors and an Israeli drug-maker blamed for a deadly US opioid epidemic settled a bellwether civil suit with two Ohio counties yesterday, opening the door for a broader national settlement worth billions of dollars.

The US$260 million (RM1.1 billion) deal with Ohio’s Summit and Cuyahoga counties set the basis for a resolution of suits by some 2,700 addiction-ravaged communities nationwide that had joined the Cleveland case, the first in a federal court to address the causes of a crisis that has wrecked the lives of millions.

Late yesterday, officials from four states driving talks for a global resolution for all those communities announced that they had a tentative deal.

They said that the four companies in the two-county deal, Cardinal Health, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Teva Pharmaceuticals, along with a fifth firm, Johnson & Johnson, had agreed to pay US$22 billion in cash over 10 years and US$26 billion of addiction treatment drugs like suboxone to resolve the suits.

“The opioid epidemic has ripped through our communities and left a trail of death and destruction in its wake,” said North Carolina attorney-general Josh Stein.

“This agreement is an important step in our progress to help restore people’s lives.”

It was not immediately clear if the proposed global settlement would be accepted by the majority of the communities involved.

On Friday, they rejected a previous version of the deal crafted by the four states, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania, judging the original US$18 billion in cash over 18 years as too small, lawyers’ fees too high, and distribution of the funds designed more to help state governments and less communities most impacted by the crisis.

Reeling from the massive human and financial burden of an addiction crisis that has left more than 400,000 dead of overdoses over the past two decades.

Communities said they need funds now to support hospitals and emergency services, and help families supporting addicts and children with addicted parents or parents who have died.

The US$260 million cash-and-drugs payout to the two Ohio counties is designed to get funds into the communities quickly, local officials said.

A trial would have examined allegations that the makers of the prescription painkillers and pharmaceutical distributors pushed billions of pills into communities without due care over two decades, making it excessively easy for patients to become addicted and creating a permanent demand. – AFP, October 22, 2019.