(The Center Square) – A Pennsylvania company boasting the reach of 1 billion patients annually and twice consecutively recognized by TIME magazine’s most sustainable companies list is paying nine states more than a quarter-billion dollars over the next years.
The settlement state prosecutors say “worsened the nationwide opioid crisis” will yield $23 million to North Carolina. Mylan, now a part of Viatris, owns a $284,447,916 share of the $720 million going to the Tarheel State, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
As part of the deal, some states can get free pharmaceutical products instead of cash. Seven companies in the deal are “prohibited from promoting or marketing opioids and opioid products, making or selling any product that contains more than 40 mg of oxycodone per pill, and are required to put in place a monitoring and reporting system for suspicious orders. Indivior has agreed to not manufacture or sell opioid products for the next 10 years, but it will be able to continue marketing and selling medications to treat opioid use disorder.”
North Carolina is sending 85% of the settlements to local governments.
The companies and their amount owed to all states collectively are Mylan (now part of Viatris), $284,447,916 paid over nine years; Hikma, $95,818,293 paid over one to four years; Amneal, $71,751,010 paid over 10 years; Apotex, $63,682,369 paid in a single year; Indivior, $38,022,450 paid over four years; Sun, $30,992,087 paid over one to four years; Alvogen, $18,680,162 paid in a single year; and Zydus, $14,859,220 paid in a single year.
“These companies didn’t do enough to prevent misuse of the addictive opioids they manufactured and helped push us into the nationwide opioid crisis that continues to take lives in North Carolina every day,” said first-term Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “Today’s settlements hold them accountable for hurting the people of our state and give us resources to help people struggling with addiction.”
