NEWARK, N.J. — “Justice cannot be bought,” and “Giving back some blood $$ is not justice.” Those were the messages displayed on signs held by protesters outside a federal courtroom Tuesday, as Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, was sentenced for its role in the opioid epidemic.
A judge ordered the company to pay $5.5 billion and approved a plan to dissolve Purdue as part of a sweeping legal settlement resolving thousands of lawsuits.
Under the agreement, Purdue will be replaced by Knoa Pharma, a public benefit company that will focus on providing opioid use disorder treatments and overdose reversal medications.
The sentencing follows Purdue’s 2020 guilty plea to charges including deceiving federal regulators and paying doctors to increase opioid prescriptions.
“Purdue Pharma put profits over patient health and safety,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The company willfully rejected the law and ignored the diversion of their highly addictive prescription drugs. Their actions contributed to the opioid crisis that claimed countless lives and destroyed entire families and communities.”
According to court documents, between 2007 and 2017, Purdue marketed opioid products to prescribers it had reason to believe were issuing prescriptions without a legitimate medical purpose. The company also misled the Drug Enforcement Administration about efforts to prevent diversion and used prescriptions written by problematic prescribers to justify its fraudulent requests to the DEA to increase the amount of its products it was permitted to manufacture.
Prosecutors said Purdue also paid kickbacks to doctors through speaker programs and to an electronic health record platform to boost prescribing.
The court ordered a $3.544 billion criminal fine and $2 billion in forfeiture. Up to $1.775 billion of that forfeiture may be credited through funds directed to state, local and tribal governments as part of the company’s bankruptcy restructuring.
The agreement also requires Purdue to create a public repository of documents related to the case.
The decision comes amid an opioid crisis linked to more than 900,000 overdose deaths in the United States since 1999. While some see the settlement as progress, others say it falls short of accountability.
U.S. Judge Madeline Cox Arleo acknowledged concerns with the agreement, calling it the “best route” despite its limitations.
Families and advocacy groups gathered outside the courthouse, with organizations including Truth Pharm and the Vilomah Foundation creating a memorial installation and sharing personal stories of loss.
“It’s no shock. This is the second time I’ve been in a courtroom where the judge was apologetic and basically said there should have been jail sentences included. But there’s always a ‘but’,” Ed Bisch, who lost his teenage son in the epidemic, told TRT World.
“If this process moves forward without fully hearing from victims, it reinforces a dangerous precedent,” said Susan Ousterman, executive director of The Vilomah Foundation. “Families deserve more than symbolic acknowledgment. They deserve justice.”
The sentencing had originally been scheduled for the previous week through a videoconference hearing, but the judge changed course after seeing victims protesting outside the courthouse in Newark and said they should have the opportunity to be present in the courtroom.
