Minnesota to get $50M for opioid crisis from Purdue Pharma, Sackler family

Minnesota will receive more than $50 million for opioid addiction treatment and prevention under a massive legal settlement reached between multiple states and the family behind Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin.

Attorney General Keith Ellison said Thursday that the Sackler family and its company will also be required to turn over a trove of more than 30 million documents said to detail Purdue Pharma's role in the country's long-running opioid crisis — which state officials say has killed nearly 5,000 Minnesotans since 2000.

If a judge approves Thursday's announced settlement, the Sackler family will pay more than $4.3 billion for opioid treatment efforts nationwide, one of the largest law enforcement settlements in history.

"The fact is you can always second-guess a settlement, and I'm sure people will — that's what they do," Ellison said. "But the bottom line is we are proud to stand with Minnesotans to get the resources they need as soon as they can and to tell the truth about what these folks did."

In a statement Thursday, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma said it would "continue to work to build even greater consensus" for its reorganization plan, "which would transfer billions of dollars of value into trusts for the benefit of the American people and direct critically-needed medicines and resources to communities and individuals nationwide who have been affected by the opioid crisis."

Minnesota first filed a consumer fraud lawsuit in Hennepin County in 2018 against Purdue Pharma, litigation modeled after successful efforts to sue tobacco companies. The state accused the company of deliberately minimizing its product's addictiveness and said that Purdue failed to sufficiently disclose the risks of long-term opioid use.

Minnesota alleged that Purdue misled health care providers about the benefits of opioids and made false statements in advertising, among other claims.

Ellison later added the Sackler family as defendants, alleging that the family personally carried out Purdue's deceptive sales and marketing practices. He claimed that the Sacklers "were involved with Purdue sales force decisions on a granular level."

Minnesota's complaint also alleged that the family was "personally aware of the risks of abuse and addiction with OxyContin as early as 1999" and instead blamed addiction on individuals. Ellison accused the Sacklers of paying themselves $4 billion in opioid profits, including an estimated $92 million in profits in Minnesota.

Ellison joined Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a Thursday news conference to announce the deal. Each stopped short of declaring the settlement ideal, citing the toll of the opioid crisis and the Sackler family's lack of contrition, yet they hailed the document release agreement as a significant breakthrough.

"When it came to the Sackler family, they knew the damage they were causing — and they caused it anyway, all for the sake of personal profit and their own self-glorification," Ellison said. "Now with this resolution, the whole world will see what they did."

The documents Purdue must release include evidence from lawsuits and investigations into the company over the past 20 years — such as deposition transcripts and videos — and e-mails involving every Sackler family member who sat on the board or worked at the company.

The deal also permanently bans the Sackler family from the opioid business. Purdue will "cease to exist" by the end of 2024, Healey said. The family sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 in response to thousands of lawsuits filed by state and local governments.

Healey on Thursday assailed the family for abusing the justice system. She also criticized the Justice Department for not pursuing charges against the Sacklers and Congress for not taking up legislation that would stop people accused of wrongdoing from seeking protection from government lawsuits via bankruptcy proceedings.

"It is impossible to put a price on what the Sacklers did, what the Sacklers and Purdue took from our families," Healey said. "Paying $4.3 billion doesn't even begin to cover their debt."

The Sacklers will also turn over control of family foundations that have $175 million in assets "to the trustees of a foundation dedicated to abating the opioid crisis," according to Ellison's office.

Between 2000 and 2019, 4,821 Minnesotans died from opioid overdoses, according to the state Department of Health Drug Overdose Dashboard. State health officials continue to report a rise in opioid deaths and emergency room visits. Early reports show 654 opioid-related deaths last year, up 59% from 2019. Emergency room visits for opioid overdoses have also climbed from 1,618 in 2016 to 3,990 last year.

Ellison added Thursday that in Minnesota, Native Americans were seven times more likely than white people to die of a drug overdose, and African Americans were twice as likely.

The Attorney General's Office convened a 2019 working group aimed at addressing the state's opioid crisis. State lawmakers also agreed in 2019 to establish the nation's first separate state fund dedicated to opioid addiction and treatment.

Rep. Liz Olson, the Duluth Democrat who was the chief sponsor of the 2019 House legislation, applauded Ellison's refusal to accept an earlier Purdue offer that was more than $1 billion less than this week's agreement and which also did not include the document disclosure agreement.

That disclosure, Olson tweeted after the announcement, "means the truth will come to light."

"The Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma created & profited off of a crisis that is still killing Minnesotans everyday," Olson wrote.

Stephen Montemayor • 612-673-1755

Twitter: @smontemayor