Washington, March 26 – Pharmaceutical firm Purdue Pharma today agreed to pay 270 million dollars to the state of Oklahoma in one of the more than 1,600 lawsuits it faces for alleged responsibility in aggravating the opiate crisis, local media reported.
The resources disbursed Purdue Pharma, the maker of oxycodone, a potent and addictive analgesic, will be used to finance the investigation and treatment of addiction in Oklahoma and the payment of legal expenses, explained the public radio NPR.
“We see this agreement with Oklahoma as an extension of our commitment to help drive solutions to the crisis of opiate addiction,” CEO Craig Landau said in a statement.
Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, will also support with $ 177.5 million the foundation of the National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa.
“The agreement reached today will provide assistance to people across the country who desperately need these services,” the Sacklers said in a separate statement.
The New York newspaper The Wall Street Journal revealed earlier this month that Purdue Pharma is seeking to declare bankruptcy, which would seek to paralyze the more than 1,600 lawsuits against it, driven by cities, counties and states of the country for allegedly misleading to increase sales. of opiates.
Today’s agreement is the result of a lawsuit filed two years ago by the Attorney General of Oklahoma, Republican Mike Hunter, in which he alleged that the pharmaceutical company participated in the opiate crisis with an aggressive sales campaign of oxycodone and misleading claims who denied the dangers of addiction.
According to NPR, Hunter has requested more than 20,000 million dollars in damages in proceedings against Purdue Pharma and other pharmaceutical companies.
Precisely this Monday, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma rejected an appeal filed by several manufacturers of opiates with which they sought to delay a state trial against them, which is scheduled to start in May.
The overdoses related to opioids in the country resulted in more than 47,000 deaths in 2017, of which 36% included drugs that had been supplied with a prescription (EFEUSA).
