By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press, and staff
COLUMBUS – More than 20 states, including Ohio, and lawyers representing some 2,000 local governments have signed on to a tentative $12 billion settlement with OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma over the company’s alleged role in the national opioid crisis.
But the majority of states have not agreed and some are promising to continue their legal fights against the company and the Sackler family, which owns it, saying the settlement does not go far enough to hold the company accountable.
While the settlement could mean that thousands of local governments will one day be paid back for some of the costs of responding to the epidemic, public officials in Akron say no amount of money will restore the families and institutions that were upended by prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl.
“The overwhelming sense of hopelessness that took over this community in 2016, you can’t monetize that,” former Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Greta Johnson told lawyers in a deposition in January. “Every single day the newspaper was reporting on the overdose death rates. You could not go into a community setting where there were not weeping mothers talking about their children.”
Summit County’s estimated payout from the $12 billion tentative Purdue settlement was estimated at $13.2 million. Akron would receive about $3.7 million. Barberton, the county’s second-largest city, would receive $492,000.
Hundreds of deaths shattered families, orphaned children, exhausted first responders and drained public resources. At one point, city officials needed a mobile morgue to house all the corpses.
“There’s still a lot of telephone calls going on. I think we see the outlines of a thing that might be, but it’s not yet,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in an interview.
Opioid addiction has contributed to the deaths of some 400,000 Americans over the past two decades.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who sued Purdue in 2017, when he was Attorney General, said the settlement was a step toward holding the company accountable so it can begin “paying to clean up the mess” it created by convincing doctors and the public that OxyContin was not addictive.
“The plans I have laid out regarding prevention education, treatment, law enforcement task forces, and support to our local governments and social services should be further funded through this settlement so it can immediately begin making a positive impact from across Ohio,” DeWine said in a statement.
But, Ohioans like Thomas Heitc, owner of the Greene Diamond Grille and Bar in Barberton, want the funds to go toward prevention and recovery, not awareness.
“Our medical examiner had to bring in refrigerated trucks because the bodies were piling up. We’re constantly aware of this problem,” he said.
Overdose deaths were happening at the rate of one per day in 2016 in Summit County and Akron, Ohio’s fifth-largest city and home to NBA legend LeBron James. The county was scheduled to be the first of some 2,000 governments scheduled to go to trial against drugmakers next month.
The agreement announced Wednesday could be worth up to $12 billion over time. That amount includes future profits for the company, the value of overdose antidotes it’s developing and cash payments of $3 billion to $4.5 billion from the Sacklers, the wealthy family that owns Purdue Pharma. The amount is contingent on the sale of the family’s international drug company, Mundipharma, which, like Purdue, has been criticized for overselling the benefits of its powerful prescription opioid painkillers and understating the risks.
The tentative agreement and expected bankruptcy filing would almost certainly remove Purdue from the first federal trial over the opioids epidemic, scheduled to begin next month in Cleveland.