OxyContin, an opioid pain reliever, is made by the Purdue Pharma laboratory.

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Toby Talbot / AP / SIPA

The American pharmaceutical company Purdue will plead guilty for its misleading promotion of pain-relieving drugs to opiates, and will now focus on fighting opioid overdoses, responsible for the deaths of more than 450,000 people in the United States for 20 years.

In an announced deal with the US Department of Justice, Purdue Pharma, owned by the controversial Sackler family, will plead guilty in New Jersey federal court to three counts, related to how he deceptively promoted this drug, and misled the US regulatory agency FDA between 2007 and 2017.

The laboratory will have to pay some 225 million dollars in criminal fines directly to the federal state, plus some 2.8 billion dollars supposed to put an end to the civil part of the litigation.

The problem is, this deal is still subject to court approval, with Purdue going under bankruptcy protection in 2019, so the company could only pay a fraction of that. sum because many creditors are already waiting to receive a check.

Dissolution

The Connecticut-based company will also have to dissolve and then create a new entity dedicated to the "public good" (Public Benefit Company), managed by a trust: this entity will have to provide anti-overdose drugs and treatments free of charge or at cost. against opioid addiction.

The profits of the entity will also have to contribute to the payment of the programs set up by the local communities - States, counties, Indian reserves - most affected by the opiates crisis.

"Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for his misconduct" detailed in the agreement, its chairman, Steve Miller, said in a statement.

"Purdue is very different today (...), we have substantially changed our direction, our operations, our governance and our mode of oversight," added the man who headed the laboratory in mid-2018, with the mission of finding a way out of the mountain of litigation brought against it.

The Sackler family in the crosshairs

The Sackler family - which financed museums around the world before being boycotted in the wake of the opioid crisis - will have to pay, separately, 225 million dollars in damages, aimed at settling its civil dispute with federal justice, the ministry said.

"Today's agreement is an essential step in the ministry's efforts to hold accountable those who fueled the opioid crisis," said Jeffrey Bossert Clark, one of the ministry's officials.

The deal comes after several years of federal investigations into Purdue's practices.

However, it does not provide for any criminal prosecution against the Sacklers, much to the chagrin of prosecutors in several states, including New York, who are determined to continue their own legal actions to make them pay more.

“While our country is still recovering from the pain and destruction caused by the greed of the Sacklers, this family is trying to escape its responsibilities and compensate, at a lower cost, the millions of victims of the crisis,” lamented the New York State Democratic Attorney General Letitia James in a statement.

"We will continue to pursue these cases in court to obtain every last penny possible, in order to limit future dependence on opiates," she added.

Comparison with the tobacco industry

As broad as this agreement is - which comes after other ad hoc agreements sealed with laboratories or distributors of opiate drugs in recent months - it is far from putting an end to the host of litigation in the United States.

Hundreds of local communities have sued laboratories, wholesalers and drugstore chains distributing opioid drugs.

All are accused of having, from the end of the 90s, pushed to an overconsumption of painkillers to opiates - until then used mainly in the treatment of the most serious diseases - even though they knew their potency. addictive.

The addictions thus generated have fueled the illegal trafficking of opiate drugs, such as the potent fentanyl, causing tens of thousands of overdose deaths each year - in total more than 400,000 in 30 years by adding prescription drugs and the trade. illegal.

Some have compared these actions to the litigation brought against the big tobacco companies in the 80s and 90s, accused of having played down the dangers of smoking for decades.

They had agreed to pay more than $ 200 billion as part of a deal in 1998.

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