Purdue Pharma's $7B opioid settlement is set for votes from victims and
cities
[June 21, 2025]
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma 's $7 billion-plus plan to settle
thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids will be sent to local
governments, people who became addicted to the drug and other impacted
groups after a judge's ruling Friday.
The nationwide settlement advanced by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane
was hammered out in negotiations between the company, groups that have
sued and representatives of members of the Sackler family who own the
company.
Lane did not accept the plan itself on Friday — just that the
information to be provided to the voters is adequate enough for them to
decide, along with the voting procedures.
Government entities, emergency room doctors, insurers, families of
children born into withdrawal from the powerful prescription painkiller,
individual victims and their families and others will have until Sept.
30 to vote on whether to accept the deal.
The settlement is a way to avoid trials with claims from states alone
that total more than $2 trillion in damages.
This month, 49 states announced they had signed on to the proposal. Only
Oklahoma, which has a separate settlement with the company, is not
involved.
If approved, the settlement would be among the largest in a wave of
lawsuits over the past decade as governments and others sought to hold
drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies accountable for the opioid
epidemic that started rising in the years after OxyContin hit the market
in 1996. The other settlements together are worth about $50 billion, and
most of the money is to be used to combat the crisis.
In the early 2000s, most opioid deaths were linked to prescription
drugs, including OxyContin. Since then, heroin and then illicitly
produced fentanyl became the biggest killers. In some years, the class
of drugs was linked to more than 80,000 deaths, but that number dropped
sharply last year.
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Protesters who have lost love ones to the opioid crisis
protest outside a courthouse in Boston, Aug. 2, 2019, where a judge
heard arguments in a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma. (AP
Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
 Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court
rejected a version of Purdue’s proposed settlement. The court found
it was improper to protect members of the Sackler family from
lawsuits over opioids, even though they themselves were not filing
for bankruptcy protection.
In the new version, groups that don’t opt in to the settlement would
still have the right to sue members of the wealthy family whose name
once adorned museum galleries around the world and programs at
several prestigious U.S. universities.
Under the plan, the Sackler family members would give up ownership
of Purdue. They resigned from the company’s board and stopped
receiving distributions from its funds before the company’s initial
bankruptcy filing in 2019. The remaining entity would get a new name
and its profits would be dedicated to battling the epidemic.
Most of the money would go to state and local governments to address
the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis, but potentially close to
$900 million would go directly to individual victims. That makes it
different from the other major settlements.
The payments would not begin until after a hearing, likely in
November, in which Lane would be asked to approve the entire plan if
enough affected parties agree.
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