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“We’ve worked hard to get the best result for Americans harmed by the opioid crisis, and it’s rewarding to take another step in the right direction,” said Tom Miller, the attorney general for Iowa, whose office led the bipartisan group in the negotiations with Allergan and Teva. “We continue to make it a priority to hold manufacturers responsible, while ensuring victims of this epidemic receive the help they need.”
Unlike Teva’s deal, under which plaintiffs can elect to receive a portion of the payout in medications used to reverse drug overdoses and treat addiction rather than in cash, Allergan’s offer is all cash with no product, lawyers familiar with the negotiations said. Teva’s payments to states and communities would be disbursed over 13 years, while Allergan’s would be over six years. The amounts for both pharmaceutical companies include the settlement figures that were already struck over the past year with a handful of states and counties.
Both Allergan and Teva sold branded as well as generic opioid painkillers. Lawyers for thousands of entities asserted that these manufacturers, like so many others, exaggerated the benefits of opioids to doctors and the public and played down the drugs’ addictive properties. In addition, although the companies are required to report suspicious orders to authorities, both failed to do so, lawyers said.
Teva had said that the potential agreement was not an admission of wrongdoing.
The deals still have a ways to go before money actually starts flowing to communities. Issues such as allocation of funds, tighter monitoring of suspicious orders and the creation of a public repository of internal documents have yet to be resolved.
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