Virginia Expected To Get $530M In Opioid Settlement

VIRGINIA — Virginia expects to receive about $530 million as part of its share of a major opioid settlement agreement between the states and the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, Attorney General Jason Miyares announced Friday.

The pharmaceutical distributors — Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen — and Johnson & Johnson will start releasing funds as part of the $26 billion opioid agreement to a national administrator on April 2, with money beginning to flow to state and local governments in the spring, according to the attorney general’s office.

The distributors and Johnson & Johnson agreed Friday to finalize the proposed settlement, resolving claims by states and local governments that the companies helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic.

“The Office of the Attorney General is dedicated to this fight and is proud to have played a role in this historic settlement, which every city and county in Virginia joined,” Miyares said in a statement Friday. “Because of this, the Commonwealth expects to receive approximately $530 million dollars to fight back against the opioid epidemic and support efforts to reduce, prevent and treat opioid addiction.”

The agreement marks the culmination of three years of negotiations to resolve more than 4,000 claims of state and local governments across the country. It is the second-largest multistate agreement in U.S. history, second only to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

The distributors and Johnson & Johnson confirmed Friday that they had determined there was sufficient participation to move forward with the settlement, which was first announced in July. The companies are not admitting wrongdoing.

All 50 states and thousands of local governments across the country signed onto to the agreement. In Virginia, all 95 counties and all 38 independent cities also signed onto the agreement.

A majority of the funds will go to Virginia’s Opioid Abatement Authority, which provides grants and loans to Virginia agencies and localities to support efforts to reduce, prevent, and treat opioid use disorder and fight the opioid epidemic.

In addition to the funds, Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen will establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to provide all three distributors and state regulators with aggregated data and analytics about where drugs are going and how often, eliminating blind spots in the current systems used by distributors, the attorney general said.

The distributors also agreed to use systems to detect suspicious opioid orders from pharmacies and report suspicious opioid orders.

As part of the settlement agreement, Johnson & Johnson is required to stop selling opioids, not fund or provide grants to third parties for promoting opioids, and not lobby on activities related to opioids.