A $7.4 billion settlement agreement with the founders of Purdue Pharma is almost sealed in ink — and Utah will get $57 million from the deal.
Utah, along with 54 qualifying jurisdictions, has now agreed to the deal, which was proposed in January and filed in bankruptcy court in March.
Several states, including Utah, sued the pharmacy company and its founders in 2019, alleging that Richard and Kathe Sackler and Purdue Pharma were largely responsible for the opioid crisis.
Purdue manufactures OxyContin and other opioid medications and “aggressively marketed them as safe” despite knowing how addictive they could be, the Utah Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) claimed.
“Utah families deserve this resolution after Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family recklessly harmed our communities and contributed to the opioid epidemic,” Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said in a news release Monday.
The DCP also claimed Purdue Pharma incentivized Utah prescribers to prescribe opioid medication with nearly $200,000 in gifts and payments. Between 2013 and 2017, 186 sales representatives visited 5,000 Utah providers, according to the Utah Department of Commerce.
Meanwhile, the number of opioid prescriptions increased by more than 1 million between 2002 and 2015, and Utah ranked seventh in the country for prescription drug deaths from 2013-2015.
Prescription opioids killed 1,611 people between 2014 and 2019, according to the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, and accounted for hundreds of overdose deaths in Utah each year from 2021 to 2023.
The Sackler family will pay $6.5 billion of the national settlement over the next 15 years, according to the Department of Commerce. Purdue Pharma will pay the remaining $900 million once its bankruptcy protections end.
Utah’s $57 million cut will add to a $540 million pot of money received through earlier settlements. A portion of the funds will be designated to the state’s Opioid Task Force, and some will go to individual counties.
All of the money will help pay for “critical resources ... to help mitigate the ongoing impact of the opioid epidemic on Utahns,” the Department of Commerce said.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
