consulting firm McKinsey to pay $230 million to settle opioid litigation

He is accused of having fueled the opioid crisis in the United States, through his advice to laboratories. The consulting firm McKinsey agreed to pay $230 million to end these lawsuits against it, according to court documents filed Tuesday, September 26. This agreement still requires the approval of a judge.

Thousands of lawsuits from communities, schools, indigenous communities and American parents, on behalf of children born with withdrawal symptoms, accused McKinsey of developing strategies with the laboratories to aggressively market prescription opioids, in order to from “maximize revenue”. McKinsey will pay $207 million to settle county and municipal claims, and $23 million for public school districts.

Opioids have caused, according to American centers for disease control and preventionmore than three-quarters of overdose deaths in the United States in 2021. That year, McKinsey had already paid more than $640 million to settle disputes with the attorneys general of 50 American states.

Strategies around a powerful painkiller

On Tuesday, the court said McKinsey created and implemented marketing strategies for Purdue, “before and after” the laboratory’s first guilty plea in 2007. This concerned OxyContin, a powerful painkiller with addictive power, over-prescribed since the 1990s.

McKinsey has always maintained that its past work was legal. However, the consulting firm declared in 2019 that it had stopped advising clients on opioid-related matters anywhere in the world.