An advertising agency that helped develop marketing campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription painkillers will pay U.S. states $350 million instead of facing possible lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis. The attorney general announced on Thursday that he had agreed to the
Publicis Health, part of the Paris-based media conglomerate Publicis Groupe, has agreed to pay the full settlement within the next two months, with most of it going toward fighting the overdose epidemic.
The company is the first advertising company in the United States to reach a major opioid settlement. The company faced lawsuits in at least Massachusetts, but most states settled the case before it went to court.
Publicis worked with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma from 2010 to 2019 on campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription opioids, Butrance and Hysingla, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James's office, which led negotiations with the company. was supporting.
James' office said these substances emphasized OxyContin's abuse-deterrent properties and encouraged patients to increase their dosage. This formulation made the drug more difficult to break down in order to get users high faster, but it did not make the pills any less addictive.
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Publicis and Purdue provided digital recorders to doctors so they could analyze conversations between prescribers and patients about taking opioids.
As part of the settlement, Publicis agreed to release internal documents detailing its work with Purdue and other companies that make opioids.
The company did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.
Pharmaceutical companies, wholesalers, pharmacies, and at least one consulting firm and HealthData have agreed to more than $50 billion in opioid settlements with federal, state, and local governments.
One of the largest individual proposed settlements is between state and local governments and Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma. As part of the deal, members of the Sackler family, which owns the company, will invest up to $6 billion and give up ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether it is appropriate to protect families from civil lawsuits as part of the agreement.
The opioid crisis has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in three waves.
The first one began after OxyContin hit the market in 1996 and was primarily associated with prescription opioids, many of them generic. By around 2010, the number of heroin deaths had increased dramatically as a result of a crackdown on overprescription and black market pills. Most recently, opioids have been linked to more than 80,000 deaths per year, an unprecedented increase. Most of them contain illegally manufactured fentanyl and other powerful lab-grown drugs.
