PROVIDENCE — State and local officials announced on Tuesday that they’d struck a settlement with three opioid distributors for $90.8 million.
The money, in addition to a $21.1 million settlement with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and $2.59 million deal with consulting firm McKinsey & Co., will help the state combat the raging opioid crisis.
“All of these companies prioritized profits over safety,” Peter Neronha, the state attorney general, said at a news conference at his office Tuesday. “They knew the risks and didn’t tell anyone.”
The state was a holdout from a global settlement that other states had reached last year. Neronha said Rhode Island’s separate agreement allowed it to get the money sooner. And, he said, it is recovering more per capita than its neighbors.
Here are five things to know about the deal:
Who’s in?
The state of Rhode Island and its cities and towns were part of the settlement agreements on the plaintiffs’ side.
The state had sued the opioid industry in Rhode Island Superior Court. Separately, in 2018, some Rhode Island cities and towns had banded together under then-Lt. Gov. Dan McKee, the former Cumberland mayor who rose to the governor’s office last year, to file their own litigation.
Thirty-three out of the 39 towns sued, but all 39 will receive settlement proceeds as part of the deal announced Tuesday, and they agreed amongst themselves — never a simple prospect in Rhode Island — on how to do it.
The defendants: Johnson & Johnson, with whom the state had signed onto a national settlement in August for up to $21.1 million; and three drug distributors whose $90.8 million settlement was announced Tuesday.
The distributors are McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen. Rhode Island had been set for trial in state court against the distributors this month. Forty-five other states had reached a deal with distributors in July, Neronha’s office said. By going its own way, Neronha said, Rhode Island gets the money sooner and also ensures it will hold even if the broader global settlement doesn’t go through. The state and its 39 cities and towns have now settled their claims against these companies.
“Not a single person in our city or state or country has gone untouched by this crisis,” Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza said Tuesday.
Who’s out?
Opioid maker Purdue Pharma was not part of the settlement. The company, whose subsidiary Rhodes Pharmaceuticals is in Coventry, had declared bankruptcy and reached a settlement with most states. But Neronha’s office has challenged the deal in part because it would have shielded Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, from further civil liability. The Sacklers would have contributed to the settlement, but it wasn’t enough, Neronha said.
“The Sackler family has spirited $10.4 billion out of the country,” Neronha said.
That legal fight is still ongoing.
Neronha’s office also didn’t settle with subsidiaries of pharmaceutical company Teva Ltd., and a trial in state court is set for March.
When will the money start arriving?
Some has already arrived. Other money will be here in just just a few weeks, and the rest will come over the course of nearly two decades.
A separate settlement of $2.59 million from consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which Neronha’s office said helped Purdue “turbocharge” OxyContin sales, started arriving in Rhode Island in 2021. The money helped fund opioid overdose reversal treatments last year.
The state will receive an estimated $4.6 million from Johnson & Johnson and $8 million from the distributors this year.
The Johnson & Johnson money lasts until 2031. The money from the distributors will be paid out until 2038. All told, the state will receive an estimated $114.5 million.
Who will get the money?
Eighty percent of the money will go to a fund controlled by the state, and 20 percent will go directly to Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns. That 20 percent portion will be divvied up based on a national formula that’s essentially population-based.
But all of it must be used for opioid abatement.
How so?
For its 80 percent share, the state will convene a committee made up of public health officials, state and local representatives, and community members to administer the statewide opioid abatement fund. They will make recommendations about how the money will be used to the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services. Distributions will be subject to the legislative appropriations process, but Neronha’s office said the money should start going out this summer.
The money for cities and towns will go there directly, but everyone’s agreed that it must be used for opioid abatement. That could include treatment, prevention, overdose rescue or recovery.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.