North Carolina will receive a cut of a $4.3 billion settlement with drugmaker Teva for opioid use prevention and treatment.
Details of how much the state will receive are still being worked out, but the settlement is to be paid out over 13 years. The settlement between Teva and 12 states plus local governments and Native American tribes is among a series of successful lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies and distributors.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein helped negotiate the deal. He says the agreement states that the money has to go to evidence-based strategies for opioid prevention and treatment.
“What I am absolutely certain of," he said, "is that there will be people alive and healthy next year, and the year after, and the year after than otherwise would have been if we hadn’t achieved these settlements.”
The lawsuits against Teva claim the company downplayed opioid addiction risks and encouraged doctors to continue to increase the doses they prescribed.
In 2020, Stein says, North Carolina saw a 40% rise in overdose deaths from 2019 — roughly nine people each day.
