Pennsylvania will receive up to $28 million as part of a lawsuit settlement with eight pharmaceutical companies accused of worsening the opioid crisis.
The opioid manufacturers agreed to pay $720 million to several states that had jointly sued them, Attorney General Dave Sunday said Thursday. The final amount that Pennsylvania will receive is dependent upon the number of local governments that opt to participate. Most of the manufacturers named in the suit are now barred from producing drugs with large amounts of oxycodone, the addictive painkiller that fueled the opioid crisis.
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Here are the eight companies and the amounts they will pay out:
• Mylan, $284.4 million over nine years
• Hikma, $95.8 million over four years
• Amnwal: $71.7 million over 10 years
• Apotex: $63.7 million over one year
• Indivior: $38 million over four years
• Sun: $30.9 million over one to four years
• Alviogen: $18.7 million over one year
• Zydus: $14.9 million over one year
Sunday said Pennsylvania's portion of the money will be distributed to counties and used for addiction prevention, treatments and recovery resources for those impacted by the opioid epidemic.
"These funds come out of the pockets of companies that contributed to the nationwide addiction epidemic and into Pennsylvania communities," Sunday said in a statement.
The settlement bans all of the companies except Indivior from promoting or marketing opioids and opioid products. They cannot make or sell pills with more than 40 mg of oxycodone and must put a monitoring and reporting system in place for suspicious orders. Indivior won't manufacture or sell opioid products for the next decade, although it will keep making medications used to treat opioid use disorders.
Other states involved in the suit include Massachusetts, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, Rhode Island, California, North Carolina, New York, Utah and Connecticut.
This settlement follows the $7.4 billion deal between all 50 U.S. states and Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family. Pennsylvania will receive approximately $200 million from that settlement, and New Jersey will get $124.5 million, although both sums are subject to agreements from local municipalities. That settlement was the largest in the U.S. involving companies accused of causing the opioid abuse.