Highly Addictive Painkillers: Society Settles for $6 Billion | Financial

As part of the deal, Purdue will transfer nearly all of its assets to states, cities and counties that are suing the drugmaker for selling the painkiller OxyContin. Billions of dollars will also be provided to fund addictions programs.

bankruptcy

A bankruptcy judge already ruled last year that the company would be broken up into pieces and creditors agreed to that plan. The company would then pay $4.5 billion in damages. But prosecutors in several states disagreed, and a US judge later overturned that plan late last year.

The Sackler family has now reached a new settlement with those states. The branch of the US Department of Justice that monitors bankruptcies also opposed the previous deal. This organism is not part of the new colony. It could still lead to a lawsuit.

half a million dead

A large number of Americans are addicted to a form of painkiller known as the opiate crisis. According to the US health service CDC, a kind of RIVM, around half a million people have died in the US since 1999 from opiate overdoses. Purdue Pharma is accused of promoting OxyContin through aggressive marketing practices, while concealing the risks of addiction and overdose.