• Opioids The other epidemic that came out of Wuhan

  • Fentanyl The drug 40 times more powerful than heroin that is spread throughout the world

The three largest

drug distributors in the

United States and the pharmaceutical company

Johnson & Johnson

(J&J) have agreed to pay some

26,000 million dollars in compensation

for their alleged role in the opioid crisis, authorities announced Wednesday.

The historic agreement will put an end to the

lawsuits brought by many states and cities in the country

against the four companies and will offer significant funds to support the communities most affected by addiction and drug overdoses.

"

Johnson & Johnson

,

McKesson

,

Cardinal Health

and

Amerisource Bergen

not only lit the fuse, but fueled the fire of opioid addictions for more than two decades. Today, we are holding these companies accountable and injecting tens of billions of dollars in communities across the country, "New York State Attorney General

Letitia James

said in a statement

.

James and prosecutors from several states confirmed the pact, already advanced this Monday by some media, and which for the moment is tentative, since now it

is up to each state and locality to pronounce

on it.

If a sufficient number of them support it, it will be effective and the signatories will begin to receive payments from the companies.

New York

, which on Monday already closed its part of the deal on its own, will receive more than $ 1 billion and, in return,

will withdraw the three distributors from a trial

currently taking place on Long Island, the first with a jury to be held. takes place in the United States because of the opioid crisis.

Johnson & Johnson, which was also among the defendants, had already escaped the trial after agreeing with the prosecution to pay 230 million dollars and abandon this business.

The agreement announced today will resolve

lawsuits from almost 4,000 entities

that have sued J&J, McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen in federal and state courts.

The three distributors agree to pay up to $ 21 billion over 18 years, while the pharmaceutical company will pay up to $ 5 billion over the next nine years.

The agreement covers only the four companies in question

, so the thousands of actions underway against other companies, including manufacturers or large pharmacy chains, will continue.

In recent years, several companies have already agreed to pay compensation for their responsibility in the crisis.

Currently, there are ongoing lawsuits in New York and California that include companies such as

Teva

or

Allergan

, while the large

pharmacy chains

are awaiting the initiation of proceedings against them in the coming months.

Meanwhile, other companies, such as

Purdue Pharma

, considered one of the biggest culprits in the opioid problem as the manufacturer of the popular OxyContin product,

have filed

for

bankruptcy

to deal with the huge amounts of money being claimed from them.

According to authorities,

between 1999 and 2019 nearly half a million people died in the United States from opioid overdoses

.

In 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, more than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses, an increase of 30% over the previous year, which had already been a record.

Of those deaths, 69,710 were attributed to opioid overdoses.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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