Drug companies near global settlement over opioid crisisA study released in October 2019 estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the US economy at least $631 billion from 2015 to 2018. Late Monday officials from four states driving talks for a global resolution for all those communities announced that they had a tentative deal. - Hundreds of thousands of deaths –It was not immediately clear if the proposed global settlement would be accepted by the majority of the communities involved. Plaintiffs had amassed large amounts of evidence showing that the companies knew they were fomenting an epidemic of addiction. In an Oklahoma trial in August, drug maker Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $572 million to compensate the state.

Source: Standard Digital October 22, 2019 06:11 UTC