Home » US, 26 billion in compensation from J&J and three other pharmaceutical companies for the health crisis generated by opioids with thousands of deaths

US, 26 billion in compensation from J&J and three other pharmaceutical companies for the health crisis generated by opioids with thousands of deaths

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US, 26 billion in compensation from J&J and three other pharmaceutical companies for the health crisis generated by opioids with thousands of deaths

Over 100,000 overdose deaths in one year in the US, the majority caused mainly by the abuse of fentanyl, an opioid a hundred times more potent than morphine. A silent pandemic that has also put pharmaceutical companies on the dock. Who have now decided to find an agreement with states and local governments to avoid lawsuits. Johnson & Johnson and three major pharmaceutical distributors have reached nationwide agreements in the US to pay 26 billion dollars in compensation for the opioid health crisis, after the lawsuits.

The opioids they are used for pain management and cause major addiction problems. According to many states and local administrations in the US, both pharmaceutical companies such as J&J and those that were involved in the distribution of these drugs are responsible for having contributed to the serious health crisis still ongoing in the country that has caused in the last twenty years the death from overdose of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson announced plans for the deal last year, but the deal was conditional on the participation of a certain critical mass of state and local governments. February 25 was the deadline day for companies to announce if they felt that a sufficient number of governments had pledged to participate in the agreement. renouncing the right to sue companies. At this point, the compensation money could start flowing to local communities by April.

“We will never have enough money to solve this problem immediately,” he said Joe Rice, one of the leading lawyers who represented local governments in the litigation that led to the settlement. “What we are trying to do is give many small communities a chance to try to change the situation.” The money will not go directly to opioid addiction victims or their survivors, but must be used by communities. The agreement provides that they will be used for public health interventions useful for managing the epidemic still underway today, for example to provide housing for people suffering from addiction and without a home. And indeed Kathleen Noonan, CEO of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, explained that some of the money should be used to provide housing for people with addictions who are homeless. Dan Keashen, a spokesman for the Camden County government, said officials are considering using the money for a public education campaign to warn about the dangers of fentanyl (an opioid). And they also want to send more drug consultants to the streets.

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The Drug Enforcement Administration, the federal agency that fights drug trafficking, says they seized enough fentanyl in 2021 to supply every US citizen with a lethal dose. “And, every day, the seizures of new matches continue”. Apart from federal funding, apart from the repression (much of the US drug comes from Mexican cartels, which rework components of mainly Chinese origin), one wonders at this point what to do. One possible way is certainly the reduction of medical prescriptions that prescribe painkillers. American doctors have abused it extensively in the past years, so much so that, explains a CDC expert, “opiates are prescribed when your wisdom tooth grows.” The abuse of pain relievers from an early age has led to drug addiction that in many cases have proved fatal.

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