Wednesday, the state of Nevada negotiated a $285 million opioid settlement with Walgreens concerning the pharmacy chain’s role in the opioid epidemic continuing to worsen in the United States.
The $285 Million Opioid Settlement
The state Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office said in a news release that last in a series of multiyear agreements with pharmaceutical companies, retailers, and other parties, it pushes Nevada’s total anticipated payments stemming from opioid settlement to $1.1 billion.
Nevada is part of other states that have reached opioid settlements now totaling more than $50 billion nationwide. Walgreens refused to say something regarding the opioid settlement, a company spokesman said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Ford’s office also said that Walgreens is the final defendant named in a lawsuit the state filed in 2019.
The $285 Million Opioid Settlement Will Be Paid Over 15 Years
The $285 million settlement will be paid over 15 years and will be divided between the state and the signatories of the One Nevada Agreement, a coalition of Nevada county and city governments, Ford said.
The state will retain about $98.1 million, which will go into a fund that was establisehd to assist finance opioid rehabilatation programs through the state Department of Health and Human Services and the coalition will receive about $116.2 million.
In june the state had end an agreement to settle $193 million with Teva Pharmaceuticals and a $152 million deal with CVS in May.
Much of the more than $50 billion acquired through opioid settlements nationwide is to be used to deal with the drug overdose crisis that leads to more than 100,000 deaths a year in the US.
Last year, CVS agreed to settle state and local governments nearly $5 billion to resolve lawsuits over the toll of opioids. But Nevada did not join in that litigation to pursue the single-state settlement, Ford spokesperson John Sadler said.
Nevada joined another multistate settlement with three of the nation’s largest opioid manufacturers in April 2022 totaling $232 million over nearly two decades.