Sackler Family, Purdue Pharma to Pay $7.4 Billion in Settlements for Role in Opioid Crisis

Published: 1/24/2025, 10:56:01 PM EST

Sackler Family, Purdue Pharma to Pay $7.4 Billion in Settlements for Role in Opioid Crisis — Purdue Pharma headquarters stands in downtown Stamford, Conn., on April 2, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, have agreed to pay a combined $7.4 billion in settlements over their painkiller product OxyContin, which played a major role in starting the opioid crisis.

The settlement specifies that $7.4 billion—$6.5 billion from the Sackler family and $897 million from Purdue Pharma—be paid over 15 years to states, tribes, and over 140,000 personal injury victims. The Sackler family must pay $3 billion of the sum in the first 3 years, and of that, $1.5 billion must be paid on the first day.

With the current deal, the Sackler family will pay $1 billion more than in the previous deal, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 for wording issues, according to New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

James announced at a press conference on Jan. 23 that her office had secured $250 million in litigation against Purdue, and $3 billion in litigation with other pharmaceutical companies. The companies include McKesson, Cardinal Health, CVS, Johnson & Johnson, and Walmart.

“We’ve ensured that those dollars are going to support efforts to save lives and stop the spread of opioid addiction, particularly in the state of New York,” James said.

The money will go toward treatment, support, and recovery programs, the provision of recovery beds, educational programs on drug addiction, and compensation for those who have lost loved ones to the opioid crisis.

“The Sackler family and their company Purdue, who helped spark the opioid crisis decades ago, have for years avoided accountability for ... all of the victims, all the loved ones who have died,” James said.

Purdue started selling OxyContin, an opioid medication for managing moderate to severe pain, in 1996. It was massively popular—which was partially due to Purdue spending six-to-twelve times more than normal on advertising for it, according to one study.

Purdue focused on selling more of the drug instead of getting the drug to people who needed it. This resulted in the company seeking out and advertising aggressively to physicians with the highest number of chronic-pain patients, or those physicians with the highest prescription rates. Other actions included misrepresenting the danger of addiction and bypassing the FDA to promote the drug to doctors.

Purdue and OxyContin have been credited with being the catalyst for and a major cause of the opioid crisis, which is killing over 80,000 people per year, according to data from the CDC quoted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Purdue Pharma has been protected from paying settlements since it filed bankruptcy in 2019, when it was facing thousands of lawsuits. That protection is set to run out before 2026, however.

As part of the deal, the Sackler family will give up ownership of Purdue. It will become its own entity with a board of directors made up of state appointees and others who have sued the company.