Opioids

McKinsey agrees to pay $650 mn for helping Purdue Pharma boost opioid sales

McKinsey & Company consulting firm has agreed to pay USD 650 million to settle a federal investigation into its work to help opioids manufacturer Purdue Pharma boost the sales of the highly addictive drug OxyContin, according to court papers filed in Virginia on Friday. As part of the deal with the US Justice Department, McKinsey will avoid prosecution on criminal charges if it pays the sum and follows certain conditions for five years, including ceasing any work on the sale, marketing or promotion of controlled substances. A former McKinsey senior partner, Martin Elling, has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for deleting documents from his laptop after he became aware of investigations into Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin that was then a client, according to the filings. A lawyer for Elling declined to comment Friday. McKinsey said in a statement on Friday that it's deeply sorry for its work for Purdue Pharma. We should have appreciated the harm opioids .

War-wracked Myanmar now world's top opium producer, says UN agency

Myanmar, already wracked by a brutal civil war, has regained the unenviable title of the world's biggest opium producer, according to a UN agency report released on Tuesday. The Southeast Asian country's opium output has topped that of Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban imposed a ban on its production, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in its Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023." The Taliban's ban has led to a 95 per cent drop in the cultivation of opium poppies, UNODC said last month. Opium, the base from which morphine and heroin are produced, is harvested from poppy flowers. From 2022 to 2023, Myanmar saw the estimated amount of land used to grow the illicit crop increase 18 per cent to 47,100 hectares (116,400 acres), the new UNODC report said. Although the area under cultivation has not returned to historic peaks of nearly 58,000 ha (143,300 acres) cultivated in 2013, after three consecutive years of increases, poppy cultivation in Myanmar is expanding and ...

CVS Health, Walmart, Walgreens to pay $13.8 bn in Opioid painkillers case

This resolves thousands of US state, local and tribal govt lawsuits accusing them of mishandling opioid painkillers

US state officials urge support for landmark $26 billion opioid settlement

Under the settlement proposal, McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp- are expected to pay a combined $21 billion, while drugmaker Johnson & Johnson would pay $5 billion

Johnson & Johnson CEO pay irks investors upset with opioid lawsuits fallout

(Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson is coming under fire from some investors who are raising questions about companies that give their chief executives hefty pay raises despite facing billions of dollars in legal costs over their role in the U.S. opioid crisis.

15-yr-old Indian-American Gitanjali Rao named first 'TIME Kid of the Year'

A brilliant scientist and inventor, Rao has been recognised for her astonishing work using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying

US Judge reduces J&J Opioid fine after mistaking thousands for millions

The miscalculation came when he was assessing various costs to the state to deal with addiction and prevention issues stemming from opioids

Implant to treat opioid addiction approved

The matchstick-sized implant is by design less susceptible to abuse or the illicit resale that plagues existing oral therapies