COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced a $36 billion deal with Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, and Johnson & Johnson.
The resolution comes after lengthy investigations and legal action regarding these companies’ involvement in the opiate crisis.
Litigations efforts were led by Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost, Josh Stein, North Carolina, Herbert Slatery, Tennessee as well as other attorney generals from eleven additional states.
Governor Mike DeWine said concerning the announcement, “The settlement announced today has the potential to help Ohioans turn the corner in our battle against opioids.”
According to the Ohio Department of Health, from 2010 to 2019, opiate overdoses killed more than 23,000 Ohioans.
Yost said these companies were the fuel behind the drug crisis.
He released an overview of the settlement:
Overview of the settlement funding
- The three distributors collectively will pay up to $21 billion over 17 years.
- Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $5 billion over nine years with up to $3.7 billion paid during the first three years.
- The total funding distributed will be determined by the overall participation of both litigating and non-litigating state and local governments.
- The substantial portion of the money must be spent on opioid treatment and prevention.
- Each state’s share of the funding has been determined by agreement among the states using a formula that takes into account the impact of the crisis on the state – the number of overdose deaths, the number of residents with substance use disorder, and the number of opioids prescribed – and the population of the state.
Overview of the injunctive relief:
The 10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen to:
- Establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to provide all three distributors and state regulators with aggregated data and analytics about where drugs are going and how often, eliminating blind spots in the current systems used by distributors.
- Use data-driven systems to detect suspicious opioid orders from customer pharmacies.
- Terminate customer pharmacies’ ability to receive shipments, and report those companies to state regulators when they show certain signs of diversion.
- Prohibit shipping of suspicious opioid orders and report such suspicious orders.
- Prohibit sales staff from influencing decisions related to identifying suspicious opioid orders.
The 10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Johnson & Johnson to:
- Stop selling opioids.
- Not fund or provide grants to third parties for promoting opioids.
- No lobby on activities related to opioids.
- Share clinical trial data under the Yale University Open Data Access Project.