Camden Feb 25 (BUS): Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors finalized nationwide settlements over their role in the opioid addiction crisis Friday, an announcement that paves the way for an influx of $26 billion into nearly every state and local government in the United States. In the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Taken together, the settlements are by far the largest of the many opioid-related cases that have been circulating across the country. It is expected to provide a major boost to efforts to reverse the crisis in the places it has devastated, including many parts of rural America.
Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson announced the settlement plan last year, but the deal was contingent on getting participation from a critical mass of state and local governments.
Friday was the deadline for companies to announce whether they feel enough governments have committed to participating in the settlement and giving up the right to sue. The four firms have notified governments’ lawyers if their thresholds are met, meaning that money could start flowing into communities by April.
“We won’t have enough money to address this problem immediately,” said Joe Rice, one of the lead attorneys who represented local governments in the lawsuit that led to the settlement. “What we’re trying to do is give a lot of small communities a chance to try and change some of their problems.”
While none of the settlement money will go directly to opioid addiction victims or survivors, the vast majority are needed to deal with the epidemic. The need for financing is deep.
Kathleen Noonan, executive director of the Camden Alliance of Healthcare Providers, said a portion of the settlement money should be used to provide housing for people with addictions and the homeless.
“We have clients who find it difficult to keep clean in order to survive in a shelter,” she said. “We would like to make them stable so that we can help them recover.”
Dan Keshen, a spokesman for the Camden County government, said officials are considering using settlement funds in a public awareness campaign to warn of the dangers of fentanyl. They also want to send more drug counselors to the streets, put additional social workers in municipal courts and pay for anti-addiction drugs in the county jail.
Officials across the country are considering pumping money into similar priorities.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget calls for $50 million of the state’s expected $86 million quota to be used this year to educate young people about opioids, train treatment providers, and improve data collection and distribution of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.
In Broward County, Florida, home of Fort Lauderdale, the number of beds at a county-operated detoxification facility could be increased from 50 to 70 or 75, district attorney Danielle Wang French said.
“It’s not enough, but it’s a good start,” she said of the settlement.
As fatal overdoses continue to spread across the United States, largely due to the spread of fentanyl and other illegally produced synthetic opioids, public health experts are urging governments to use the money to ensure addicts have access to drug treatment. They also emphasize the need to fund programs that have proven to be effective, collect data on their efforts and launch prevention efforts targeting youth, with a focus on racial equality.
“It shouldn’t be: Ready, set spending,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a former secretary of the Maryland Department of Health who is now the deputy dean of public health at Johns Hopkins University. “It should be: Think, Strategic, Spend.”
In a separate deal also listed in $26 billion, the four companies reached a $590 million settlement with the federally recognized Native American tribes. About $2 billion has been earmarked for fees and expenses for attorneys who have spent years working on the case.
New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson has nine years to pay its $5 billion stake. Distributors – Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based AmerisourceBergen; Columbus, Ohio-based Cardinal Health; and Irving, Texas-based McKesson — they agreed to pay a combined $21 billion over 18 years. To reach the maximum amounts, states have to urge local governments to sign in.
Settlements go beyond money. J&J, which has stopped selling prescription opioids, agrees not to resume work. Distributors agree to send data to the clearinghouse with the goal of assisting in reporting when prescription drugs are diverted to the black market.
The companies do not admit wrongdoing and continue to defend themselves against allegations that they helped cause the opioid crisis brought by entities not involved in the settlements.
In a joint statement, the distributors described the settlement’s implementation as “a major milestone toward achieving widespread resolution of government opioid claims and providing meaningful relief to communities across the United States.”
The requirement to use most of the money to address the opioid crisis contrasts with a series of public health settlements in the 1990s with tobacco companies. In those cases, states have used large portions of settlement money to fill budget gaps and fund other priorities.
The amount sent to each state under the opioid settlement is based on a formula that takes into account the severity of the crisis and the population. Provincial and local governments also receive shares of the money. A handful of states — Alabama, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Washington, and West Virginia — did not join all or part of the settlement, mostly because they had their own deals or were preparing for trial.
In Camden, Lisa Davey, a recovery specialist at Maryville Addiction Treatment Center, shared a needle exchange this week to dispense naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses, and ask people if they want to start treatment.
Davy said she’d like to see detoxification and treatment programs receive more funding to keep people in them for longer. She said users can detox and return to the streets in search of drugs within days.
“They need more time to work on recovery,” she said.
A man who picks up clean needles said he only asked to be identified as Anthony B. He was 46 years old and had been struggling with addiction since he was a teenager. He said he would like to see an effort to cut fentanyl and related synthetic opioids that lead to overdose deaths from the drug supply.
“The fentanyl should go,” he said.
Martha Chavis, president and CEO of the Camden Area Health Education Center, which manages needle exchanges, said there is a need to provide services like hers in more places. Now, users from remote suburbs travel to Camden to get clean needles and kits to test their drugs for fentanyl.
The settlement with J&J and the three distributors represents a major step toward resolving the massive array of lawsuits in the United States over responsibility for an epidemic that has been linked to the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans over the past two decades.
Other companies, including business consultant McKinsey and drug makers Endo, Mallinckrodt and Teva, have arrived in national settlements or a series of local settlements. Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and a group of states are mediating through the US Bankruptcy Court to try to reach a nationwide settlement.
The crisis has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, with opioid-related deaths in the United States reaching more than 76,000 in the 12 months that ended in April 2021, largely due to the spread of fentanyl and other lab-made drugs. A recent report from a panel from the Lancet medical journal predicted that 1.2 million Americans could die of an opioid overdose between 2020 and 2029 without policy changes.
John F. Kelly, professor of psychiatry in addiction medicine at Harvard Medical School, said he wants to see the money from the settlements go not only to treatment and recovery and support efforts but also to build systems designed to prevent this type of epidemic from occurring. repeatedly.
“Sort of a national council or organization could be set up…to prevent this kind of lack of oversight from happening again – where the industry is allowed to create a public health risk,” he said.
AOQ