(Washington) The consulting firm McKinsey has agreed to pay $230 million to end lawsuits accusing it of fueling the opioid crisis in the United States through its advice to laboratories, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
Thousands of lawsuits from communities, schools, indigenous communities and American parents on behalf of children born with withdrawal symptoms had accused him of developing strategies with laboratories to aggressively market prescription opioids in order to ” maximize revenue.
McKinsey will pay $207 million to settle county and municipal claims, and $23 million for public school districts.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids caused more than three-quarters of overdose deaths in the United States in 2021, the year in which Mc Kinsey had already paid more than $640 million to settle disputes with the attorneys general of 50 American states.
On Tuesday, the court said McKinsey created and implemented marketing strategies for Purdue “before and after” the company’s first guilty plea in 2007 to OxyContin, a powerful, addictive painkiller that has been overprescribed for years. 90.
This agreement still requires the approval of a judge.
McKinsey has always maintained its past work was legal, but said in 2019 it had stopped advising clients on opioid-related cases anywhere in the world.
At the beginning of August, the US Supreme Court suspended an agreement between Purdue shareholders and several states, relating to compensation of up to $6 billion, following a request from the Department of Justice criticizing this agreement for exonerating the Sackler family from any future lawsuits from victims, without their consent, with the exception of the federal state.