Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced that Kentucky will participate in a $17.3 billion national settlement with pharmaceutical companies Teva and Allergan, as well as pharmacies CVS and Walgreens, for their roles in the opioid crisis.
As part of the agreement, Kentucky will receive more than $317 million over 15 years. The companies have agreed to start releasing funds to a national administrator sometime this summer and the money is expected to begin flowing to state and local governments by the end of the year.
“I have repeatedly called the drug epidemic the public health challenge of our lifetime, and I mean it,” Cameron said. “While nothing can bring back the lives and livelihoods lost to the opioid epidemic, I hope these settlements will give Kentuckians some relief and help prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again.”
In addition to the monetary aspect, the agreements will also require Teva to institute programs that will, among other things, prevent opioid marketing and ensure systems are in place to prevent opioid misuse. Other terms of the multi-state settlement are that Allergan must not sell opioids for the next 10 years, while CVS and Walgreens have agreed to monitor, report, and share data about suspicious activity related to opioid prescriptions.
Cameron’s office says this means that over the past three years, they have now secured over $900 million in settlement funds from pharmacies, distributors, wholesalers, and manufacturers of opioids, for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.
In addition to Kentucky, the attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin, joined in securing the settlement.
To read a copy of the Teva settlement, click here. To view the Allergan settlement, click here.
To see the CVS settlement, click here. To read a copy of the Walgreens settlement, click here.