Hawkeye Reporter

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said that a settlement had been reached in his lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, which will net the state more than $20 million. 

As part of the agreement, Miller said that the Hawkeye State would receive $25 million of a $4.3 billion settlement from Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, the Des Moines Register reported July 8. The company has faced over 3,000 lawsuits for its marketing of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, which played a role in the opioid epidemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

"No settlement could ever be enough to make up for the misconduct by the Sacklers and the company,” Miller said in a news release about the deal. "This agreement is in the best interests of Iowans, however, and will go a long way toward abating the opioid crisis the defendants helped create." 

The settlement money will be used for "prevention, treatment and recovery efforts across the country," the state Attorney General's office said in the release.  

Iowa sued Purdue Pharma in May 2019, as well as its former president and board chairman, Richard Sackler. The lawsuit claimed that the drug company, while marketing OxyContin, engaged in unfair, deceptive and unlawful practices, the Attorney General's office said. 

Purdue officials "repeatedly" made false and deceptive claims that OxyContin was "safe and suitable" for a wide range of pain patients, the lawsuit claimed, the Attorney General's office said.  

One of the major issues the lawsuit alleged was that Purdue said OxyContin posed a "low risk of addiction," however, Miller said that's not true, the Des Moines Register reported. 

A resolution was filed in bankruptcy court by Purdue on July 7 after Iowa and other states sued, the Attorney General's office said. It is now subject to approval by the states and by the bankruptcy judge.

As part of the deal, the Sacklers are permanently banned from the opioid business. 

The $4.3 billion settlement will be paid to the impacted states over nine years, according to the deal, with the exact annual amount to be determined. 

Additionally, thousands of individual victims will also receive compensation as part of the bankruptcy process, said the press release.

The Iowa Department of Public Health recorded at least 893 deaths involving opioids from 2016 to 2020, noting that prescription painkillers like OxyContin often lead to the use of other, cheaper opioids like heroin. Approximately 60% could be directly traced back to pain relievers.

A study published in April by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the economic impact of the opioid crisis on Iowans at $6.1 million in 2017 alone, the Des Moines Register reported.