$7.4bn settlement over painkiller that fuelled US opioid crisis
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Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Friday, the 24th of January. US states reach a $7 billion settlement with the makers of a painkiller that fuelled the American opioid epidemic. President Trump tells international business leaders to move production to the US or face big tariffs. And why Mount Everest is becoming even more expensive to climb. Also in the podcast...
His family still doesn't know where he is, says Zaki. They still don't know until they can confirm it.
The harrowing search for the missing in Gaza. And Emilia Perez becomes the most nominated foreign film ever at the Oscars. In the late 1990s, Purdue Pharma aggressively promoted the use of opioids, specifically OxyContin.
Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive. But that is far from actual fact. Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted.
Its actions helped fuel the drug addiction crisis in America, which has led to 700,000 overdose deaths over the past two decades. Now the firm and its owners, the Sackler family, have agreed a $7.4 billion payout to settle thousands of lawsuits. I got the details from Neda Talfik in New York.
The Sackler family was the wealthy owners of Purdue Pharma. And Purdue made massive amounts of money selling opioid painkillers. It made the family billionaires. They had their names on art museums and other institutions. And OxyContin was promoted through doctor's offices, through advertisements. There was firms that worked with Purdue Pharma to work on exactly how to market the opioid. And they really downplayed just how addictive OxyContin was. And what resulted was just an explosion of prescriptions across America for Americans in pain. But the opioids became so addicted that it really fueled this crisis where people didn't get the right treatment for their addiction and then would go on to even harder drugs like cocaine or heroin.
And so this is something that was rampant through the suburbs of America. It affected everybody. It didn't discriminate by age, by skin color. And at one point, when this was clear, it was a real public health crisis. That's when the examination of Purdue pharmacies themselves, doctors really came under scrutiny. That's why we have so many lawsuits in this country trying to get justice for some of these victims who suffered greatly by the opioid crisis.
OK, so take us through this latest settlement.
Well, this settlement, it's interesting because this is the second settlement. About seven months ago, the Supreme Court actually blocked the initial agreement between Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. As all these lawsuits were coming through, Purdue wanted to file bankruptcy. And so as part of that, this settlement with states, local governments and individuals who are suing Perdue and the Sacklers, they kind of came to an agreement about how much the Sackler family would put forward of their individual fortune and how much Perdue would also put forward. But that initial settlement made it so that nobody could then sue the Sackler family after that settlement.
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