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The Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma LP reached a deal with a group of attorneys general to pay up to $6 billion in cash to resolve widespread litigation alleging that they fueled the U.S. opioid epidemic, bringing the OxyContin maker closer to exiting bankruptcy...The attorneys general for eight states and the District of Columbia, who had blocked a previous settlement that included a $4.3 billion cash payment, announced the deal after weeks of mediation with the Sacklers...The family agreed to pay at least $5.5 billion in cash, which will be used for abating a crisis that has led to nearly 500,000 U.S. opioid overdose deaths over two decades...READ MORE

Attorney General Aaron Ford announced Thursday that Nevada would join a multi-state opiod settlement with drugmakers and distributors...Ford said that the state would receive around $285 million through a pair of settlements...Last year, Ford announced a $45 million settlement against one company involved in the opioid litigation. The lawsuit is being handled on a contingency fee basis for the state by Eglet Prince, the law firm where Ford worked as a private attorney before being elected attorney general in 2018. Ford, however, recused himself from the selection process...Ford in August announced that Nevada would opt out of a $26 billion multi-state settlement...READ MORE

CVS, Walgreens and Walmart pharmacies recklessly distributed massive amounts of pain pills in two Ohio counties, a federal jury said...in a verdict that could set the tone for U.S. city and county governments that want to hold pharmacies accountable for their roles in the opioid crisis...Lake and Trumbull counties blamed the three chain pharmacies for not stopping the flood of pills that caused hundreds of overdose deaths and cost each of the two counties about $1 billion, their attorney said...The counties were able to convince the jury that the pharmacies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities...READ MORE

A landmark opioid trial is getting underway in Cleveland. For the first time, pharmacies...will be on trial, and there will be far-reaching implications for big-ticket policy questions far afield of the opioid crisis...On one side will be Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart. On the other, two Ohio counties...The basic theory that will be trial-tested is whether pharmacies are legally responsible for creating a public nuisance by overlooking so-called “red flags” when filling customers’ prescriptions for FDA-approved opioids...READ MORE

Native American tribes in the U.S. have reached settlements over the toll of opioids totaling $590 million with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the country’s three largest drug distribution companies, according to a court filing...The filing in U.S. District Court in Cleveland lays out the details of the settlements with Johnson & Johnson and distribution companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson...All federally recognized tribes will be able to participate in the settlements, even if they did not sue over opioids...More than 400 tribes and intertribal organizations representing about 80% of tribal citizens have sued over opioids...READ MORE

A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family who stand accused of helping fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, a decision that threatened to upend the bankruptcy reorganization of their company, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP...U.S. District Judge...said...the New York bankruptcy court that approved the settlement did not have authority to grant the Sacklers the legal protection from future opioid litigation that formed the linchpin of Purdue’s reorganization...READ MORE

The Oklahoma Supreme Court...overturned a $465 million opioid ruling against drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, finding that a lower court wrongly interpreted the state’s public nuisance law in the first case of its kind in the U.S. to go to trial...The ruling was the second blow this month to a government case that used a similar approach to try to hold drugmakers responsible for the national epidemic of opioid abuse. Public nuisance claims are at the heart of some 3,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, distribution companies and pharmacies, but it’s not clear that the legal theory is in trouble with so many more cases queued up to test it...READ MORE

A new 'linkage center' aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities opened in San Francisco last week - but distressing images show an open air illicit drug consumption site that is now littered with needles and crowded with addicts shooting up in broad daylight...READ MORE

The Biden administration is doling out $30 million in unprecedented grants aimed at harm reduction strategies to combat opioid abuse, including funding for needle exchanges and fentanyl test strips..The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced...it is accepting applications for the harm reduction grant program, including from primary care and other types of providers. The announcement comes more than a month after recent data showed more than 100,000 people died of a drug overdose over a 12-month period...READ MORE

The...Supreme Court...cleared the way for New York to collect a $200 million surcharge imposed on opioid manufacturers and distributors to defray the state's costs arising from the deadly epidemic involving the powerful painkilling drugs...The justices declined to hear an appeal by two trade groups representing drug distributors and generic drug makers and a unit of British-based pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt Plc of a lower court's decision upholding the surcharge...The law's challengers included the Association for Accessible Medicines, whose members include drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Plc...and Mallinckrodt, and the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents wholesale distributors...The alliance's members include the three largest opioid distributors in the United States, McKesson Corp, AmerisourceBergen Corp and Cardinal Health...READ MORE