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This corresponds to around NOK 73 billion. Both the fines and the admission of guilt were part of an agreement.
In practice, the company has paid physicians to write more prescriptions for Oxycontin. It is owned by the Sackler family, which had previously been considered one of the richest in the United States.
The company has now filed for bankruptcy as part of a plan to handle several thousand lawsuits.
Since the company also has other creditors, it is not known whether all the fines will be paid to the US authorities.
“Prescription opioid abuse has contributed to a national tragedy with addiction and death,” Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen told ABC News.
Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen believes that prescription opioid abuse is a national tragedy.
Photo: Yuri Gripas / Reuters
More than 470,000 deaths
In 2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national health crisis in the United States.
Families and communities have been affected by the crisis, which in 2017 claimed 70,000 overdose deaths in the United States.
More than 470,000 people have had to pay with their lives after becoming addicted to painkillers since 2000.
The best known opioid drug is Oxycontin, which is manufactured by the American company Purdue Pharma.
They have admitted that they have misinformed doctors and patients about the effects of the drug.
“It all started with pain relievers,” said Dawn Mason of Hedgesville.
when NRK met her earlier this year.
This year there have already been several verdicts against pharmaceutical companies, which have been accused of generating an addiction crisis in the country.
John Kapoor, founder of the American pharmaceutical company Insys, has been sentenced, among other things, to five and a half years in prison for having contributed to the opioid crisis.
John Kapoor, founder of the American pharmaceutical company Insys, was sentenced to prison.
Photo: Charles Krupa / AP
Kapoor was indicted in May. According to the indictment, Insys paid doctors to prescribe the company’s addictive and pain reliever Subsys to patients who did not need them.
The 76-year-old man was then the first owner of a pharmaceutical company to make amends in these cases.
The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson was sentenced in August last year to pay more than 5.1 billion crowns in fines for having contributed to the opioid crisis.
Background:
Billions of Billions Lawsuit Against Painkiller Producer
Purdue Pharma must pay billions in fines, but has already filed for bankruptcy.
Photo: Drew Angerer / AFP
Not happy
However, authorities in several US states believe that the agreement reached with Purdue Pharma is not good enough, in part because the Sackler family is escaping for very little money.
“In this case, the truth must be revealed and the perpetrators must be held accountable,” said Maura Healey at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office.
– Today’s settlement does not compensate for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by Purdue Pharma.
“Instead, it allows billionaires to keep their billions without accounting for how much they actually earned,” said Letitia James of the Attorney General’s Office in New York.
Thomas Seltzer also addresses the opioid crisis in the United States in an episode of the series “UXA – Thomas Seltzer’s America”:
Unemployment, poverty and hopelessness in the US coal belt keep men dying sooner than for generations. However, there is hope.
