DENVER (KDVR) — A $26 billion national opioid settlement has been finalized with Colorado set to receive $385 million of it, Attorney General Phil Weiser announced.
The money will be coming from the country’s three major pharmaceutical distributors – Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen – and Johnson & Johnson.
The settlement comes after three years and more than 4,000 lawsuits filed against them over the harm caused by prescription opioids.
The companies will begin sending money to a national administrator in April. J&J dollars will be paid over nine years and funds from Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen will be distributed over the course of 18 years.
“Colorado has already laid the groundwork for distribution of these dollars, with all 64 counties and nearly all of our state’s municipalities poised to work together to address the opioid crisis in our state,” Weiser said. “I am grateful to local governments statewide for their commitment to protecting our residents and that they are, in many cases, already strategizing how these dollars can best serve their communities.”
Each of the state’s 64 counties signed an agreement last year on where the money will go.
Suggested uses for the money touch all aspects of addiction, whether it’s funding for the overdose reversal medication naloxone, helping people involved in the criminal legal system overcome addiction or providing services for children whose homes are impacted by opioid use.
Most recently, five people who died from a suspected overdose of fentanyl-laced cocaine sparked the awareness of the drug’s deadly danger.
In the year ending July 2018, there were 126 synthetic opioid deaths in Colorado. That grew sevenfold by September of last year when 896 people died.
This is the largest settlement to date among the many opioid-related cases that have been playing out across the country. It’s the second-largest multistate agreement in U.S. history, second only to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.