One of the world’s largest consulting firms settled Feb. 3 with Alabama and 46 other states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories in a suit involving opioids.
McKinsey & Company will pay $573 million to stop the lawsuit, which was investigating the company’s role in working for opioid companies, helping those companies promote pharmaceuticals and profiting from the opioid crisis. Alabama’s allotment totals $9,229,421. It is the first multistate opioid settlement to result in a large payment to states to deal with the crisis.
“The opioid crisis has wrought tremendous suffering upon its victims throughout Alabama over the last 20 years,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. “Opioid addiction, abuse and overdose deaths have torn families apart, damaged relationships and eroded the social fabric of communities. It has taken a huge toll on our state, with increased health care, child welfare, treatment and criminal justice costs, as well as lost economic opportunity and productivity. The careless greed of companies that exploited people’s pain and exacerbated their suffering has caused incalculable harm. It is appropriate that they be held to account, through settlements such as this, to provide some measure of remediation for the terrible damage they have caused.”
Documents to be made public
As part of the settlement, McKinsey is required to make publicly available online its internal documents detailing its work for Purdue Pharma and other opioid companies.
McKinsey will also adopt a document retention plan and continue looking into allegations that two of its partners tried to destroy files as a response to the investigation. All future partners must agree to a strict ethics code and refrain from advising companies on Schedule II and III narcotics.
The complaint lists how McKinsey instructed Purdue to maximize profits from opioid products, including focusing on high-volume prescribers.
The filing describes how McKinsey contributed to the opioid crisis by promoting marketing schemes and consulting services to opioid manufacturers, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, for more than a decade. The firm advised specific messaging to encourage physicians to prescribe more OxyContin and skirting pharmacy restrictions to deliver high-dose prescriptions.
Marshall announced the decision today in a press release.
The Attorney General’s office has filed other lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and McKesson Corporation over their roles in the opioid crisis. The case is pending in the Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The states involved created an executive committee made of attorney generals from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont. They were joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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