Purdue Pharma Expected to Forfeit $225 Million in OxyContin Opioid Settlement as Judge Reviews Deal

A judge is expected to sentence OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to forfeit $225 million to the Justice Department on Tuesday, clearing the way for the company to finalize a settlement of thousands of lawsuits it faces over its role in the opioid crisis.

The penalty was agreed to in a 2020 pact to resolve federal civil and criminal probes the company was facing. If the judge signs off, other penalties will not be collected in return for Purdue settling the other lawsuits.

Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges in November 2020. The company admitted it did not have an effective program to keep its powerful prescription painkillers from being diverted to the black market, despite telling the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that it did.

It also admitted that it paid doctors through a speakers program to prescribe the drugs and paid an electronic medical records company to send doctors information on patients that encouraged more opioid prescriptions.

While Purdue produced only a fraction of the opioid pills that flooded the market in the 2000s, advocates have long seen aggressive sales of OxyContin as one of the touchstones of the crisis. At a 1996 event to rally Purdue’s sales force, Richard Sackler, then a top Purdue executive and later president of the company, called for a “blizzard of prescriptions.”

The settlement, approved by another judge last year, could take effect May 1. It requires members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion to state, local and Native American tribal governments, some individual victims and others.