Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro announced on Wednesday that his office has reached an agreement with three of America’s leading pharmaceutical distributors concerning the opioid crisis.
The $26 billion agreement with Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen along with drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson will also require “significant industry changes” to prevent the crisis from repeating itself in the future.
The distributors will be required under the agreement to establish a central clearinghouse to provide all three entities along with state regulators with aggregated data and analytics on where drugs are going and how often they are delivered, use data-driven systems to detect suspicious opioid orders, prohibit the shipping those orders and require the companies to report them. Sales staff from the distributors would be prohibited from influencing decisions related to identifying suspicious orders.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson would be required to stop selling opioids, stop providing funds or grants to third parties for promoting opioids, and stop lobbying on activities related to opioids and share clinical trial data.
States have 30 days to sign onto the deal and local governments in the participating states will have up to 150 days to join to secure a critical mass of participating states and local governments. Shapiro said that the state expects a maximum combined payment of $1 billion.
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