A $26 billion national opioid settlement involving drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors has been finalized, and the funds would soon be consigned to every state and local government in the U.S.
The deal was announced last year, but its fate depended completely on the participation of a decent number of state and local governments. The settlement would reverse all the effects of the opioid crisis throughout the nation and would decently pay the people affected by the epidemic.
The settlement amount would not be directly handed to the victims of opioid addiction or their survivors as a huge amount of it would be initially required to deal with the epidemic. A portion of the amount would be used to provide housing to homeless people due to opioid addiction.
A spokesperson for the Camden County government said that the money allotted from the settlement would be used to run a public education campaign to warn about the dangers of fentanyl. The county would even put more social workers in municipal court, drug counselors on the streets and pay for anti-addiction medications in the county jail. Officials throughout the country are considering using the money for similar purposes.
Johnson and Johnson (J&J) will pay its share of $5 billion over the span of nine years. Whereas the distributors, including AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, will pay $21 billion over 18 years.
