Connecticut”™s William Tong and New York”™s Letitia James are among a number of attorneys general across the country vowing to fight on against OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.
The attorneys generals”™ statements come in the wake of yesterday”™s announcement that the U.S. Justice Department had reached an $8.3 billion settlement with the Stamford drugmaker; that sum includes a $225 million civil settlement with the billionaire Sackler family, which is expected to relinquish control of the firm.
The settlement “doesn”™t account for the hundreds of thousands of deaths or millions of addictions caused by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family,” James said. “Instead, it allows billionaires to keep their billions without any accounting for how much they really made.
“From the beginning, we”™ve aimed to unearth how much the Sacklers actually profited and how much they continue to hide away,” she continued. “While no amount of money can ever compensate the pain that so many now know, we will continue to litigate our case through the courts to secure every cent we can to limit future opioid addictions.
“We are committed to holding the Sacklers and others responsible for the role they played in fueling the opioid crisis,” James declared.
Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in the face of thousands of civil lawsuits brought against it by a number of states, counties and municipalities.
As part of its bankruptcy proposal, the Sacklers have agreed to divest themselves of the firm, which stands to be reconstituted as a for-profit public trust corporation. The proposal has yet to be ruled upon.
“This settlement provides a mere mirage of justice for the victims of Purdue”™s callous misconduct,” Tong said. “The federal government had the power here to put the Sacklers in jail, and they didn”™t. Instead, they took fines and penalties that Purdue likely will never fully pay. Every dollar paid here is one dollar less for states like Connecticut trying to maximize money from Purdue and the Sacklers to abate the opioid epidemic.
“Preserving Purdue”™s ability to continue selling opioids as a public benefit corporation is simply unacceptable. The timing of this agreement mere weeks before the election raises serious questions about whether DOJ political leadership was negotiating in the best interest of the American public,” he added.
“The Department of Justice failed,” stated Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. “Justice in this case requires exposing the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable, not rushing a settlement to beat an election. I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long.”
“I cannot support this deal,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein declared. “I have alleged that Purdue engaged in kickbacks to doctors, misled the DEA, and conspired to prescribe addictive pills without a legitimate medical purpose ”” all to make billions of dollars. And the Sacklers extracted for themselves from Purdue more than $10 billion in recent years.”
