Tennessee To Receive Part Of $573 Million Settlement Between Global Consulting Firm McKinsey & Company & 54 States & Territories Over Firm’s Role In Consultations With Opioid Manufacturers On How To Best Market & Profit From Opioid Drug Sales.
Photo Credit: Tony Talbot / AP
Published February 5, 2021
The Center Square [By Vivian Jones]-
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced Thursday that Tennessee will receive more than $15.2 million from the settlement between global consulting firm McKinsey & Company and 54 states and territories over the firm’s role in consulting opioid manufacturers on how to best market and profit from opioid drug sales.
The state will use the funds to address problems created by opioids in the state.
More than 1,000 people die of opioid overdoses each year in Tennessee. According to the settlement, McKinsey contributed to the opioid crisis by providing consulting and marketing services to opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, which produces OxyContin, for more than a decade.
Court documents outline how McKinsey advised Purdue on how to circumvent pharmacy restrictions to deliver high-dose prescriptions, how to target high-volume opioid prescribers, and on specific messaging to get doctors to prescribe more OxyContin to patients.
“We deeply regret that we did not adequately acknowledge the tragic consequences of the epidemic unfolding in our communities,” McKinsey Global Managing Partner Kevin Sneader said in a statement. “With this agreement, we hope to be part of the solution to the opioid crisis in the U.S.”
According to the complaint, McKinsey partners exchanged emails about deleting documents and emails relating to work for Purdue when states began filing lawsuits against the opioid manufacturer. McKinsey agreed in the settlement to prepare and disclose online thousands of internal documents detailing its work for Purdue Pharma and other opioid companies.
“We appreciate McKinsey taking responsibility for its part in the opioid crisis and how quickly and decisively the states and territories acted, together and on a bipartisan (yes, bipartisan) basis, to bring this to a conclusion,” Slatery said in a statement. “We will finally get some funds directed to address this longstanding problem.”
Slatery was one of 10 state attorneys general who were on the executive committee for the investigation.
About the Author:
Vivian Jones, The Center Square Staff Reporter
Vivian Jones reports on Tennessee and South Carolina for The Center Square. Her writing has appeared in the Detroit News, The Hill, and publications of The Heartland Institute.
One Response
I majority of the problems pertaining to this opioid crisis is the heroin and fentanyl being smuggled into the country. The wide spread use with cities like LA, San Francisco, and many others on the west coast with the giving of hypodermic needles and condoning of out use of addicts in public is the real problem. Yes, there are some issues with prescription pain relieves but nothing to the degree of the illegal smuggled opioid drugs and illicit use. The Democrats have to distract from what’s happening in their own cities and the fact that heroin and fentanyl is being smuggled across our southern border. Their dislike of the border wall because it was president Trump’s plan. Although the Democrats in the past were infavor of a border wall but changed their minds after Trump put it in his campaign and put it into being. Now the Democrats can’t let the public know just how much of the smuggled drugs are coming across because it would give the impression that the Democrats don’t care, which they don’t really because the know of the drugs coming into the US. So they draw your eyes away from the cities allowing use and the southern border and put the crisis at the feet of legitimate people who need pain relief but because of the fabrication of the real numbers, which real numbers don’t exist because those cities stopped arresting heroin users and minimize the deaths of addicts in their cities. They continuously could you to look else where and law suits are big targets to look at. The focus needs to be on these Democratic controlled cities and the heroin and fentanyl use, along with the billion dollar smuggling from the south.