Sacklers, Purdue Pharma, propose $10-12 billion opioid settlement that makes OxyContin firm a public trust

Purdue Pharma, makers of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, and the Sackler family that owns and founded the company have proposed a settlement worth $10 billion to $12 billion to resolve more than 2,000 federal, state, and local lawsuits blaming the company and family for helping start and profiting off the opioid crisis, NBC News and The New York Times report. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, as described to the Times, the Sacklers would pay $3 billion of their own money, give up ownership of Purdue, sell off another drug company — Mundipharma, worth an estimated $1.5 billion — and transform Purdue into a "public beneficiary trust" that would steer drug-sale profits toward the plaintiffs and give out its pending anti-addiction medications for free.

The profits from the Purdue products — including OxyContin — that would be funneled to the plaintiffs, plus the donated drugs, are valued at $7 billion to $8 billion, the Times reports.

About 10 states have been negotiating with Purdue for months in talks pushed by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who ordered all parties to keep discussions private. It's not clear the roughly 38 other states that have filed suit against Purdue and the Sacklers — Oklahoma settled with Purdue earlier this year — will sign on to the tentative agreement or that the 34,000 cities and counties that have not yet filed suit would agree to be governed by the global settlement.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Purdue said in a statement that while it is "prepared to defend iteself vigorously," it "sees little good coming from years of wasteful litigation and appeals." An executive committee for the plaintiffs told the Times: "Per Judge Polster's confidentiality order that we will respect, we cannot speak publicly to any speculation or media reports on settlement negotiations with the defendants we are preparing to litigate against in federal court this fall." Several state attorneys general and lawyers for local governments confirmed that they are in active talks with Purdue.