Warren County to gain over $170,000 from opioid settlement

Warren County will soon gain $171,431  in funds from a multi-state opioid suit settlement. The payout is expected to be used to abate problems caused by opioids in the participating states.

In a Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, Board President Jeff Holland signed a memorandum of understanding for the litigation.

An multi-billion settlement agreement with Johnson & Johnson and three pharmaceutical distributors, Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, has been reached. Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $5 billion over nine years with $3.7 billion being paid during the first three years. The distributors will pay out 21 billion collectively over the next 18 years.

The court orders require Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen to establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to supply aggregated data and analytics to track the location and frequency of where drugs are going.

In a November press release, Attorney General Lynn Fitch stated, “This settlement is a step toward holding companies accountable for the role they played in this epidemic and toward healing Mississippi.”

The 10-year agreement also will require Johnson & Johnson to stop selling opioids and not lobby on activities related to opioids.

The first payment of the settlement arrangement should be received in April 2022.

Mississippi was joined by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.