West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told Newsmax on Monday that he'll continue to oppose a proposal by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to distribute money from its multitrillion-dollar opioid lawsuit settlement according to states' population.
"This is a classic type of case where you see that a lot of people in government come together and they're not as focused on fixing the underlying problem, but they're more interested in just gathering money for their states," Morrisey told Newsmax's "National Report" about Purdue's plans, which are part of the company's bankruptcy filings.
West Virginia was at the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, he added, but under the proposed settlement, larger states like California, New York and Texas would collect more money.
"That is absolutely wrongheaded and stupid government policy to do this on a population-based formula. ... It's wrong to be treating a state that is not nearly as hard-hit as West Virginia in such a favorable way," he said.
Morrisey filed the state's second lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and former chief executive Richard Sackler in May 2019, alleging that the company had created a false narrative to convince prescribers that its products were not addictive and that they were safer than they were, reports WBOY in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
The state first sued Purdue Pharma in 2001, winning a $10 million settlement in 2004. That case, however, concerned an earlier version of OxyContin, not the version of the opioid that came out in 2010 that the company claimed was tamper-resistant.
Morrisey told Newsmax on Monday that West Virginia has been working on a recovery fund structure in recent years, and has been working to get its cities and counties to agree to that
"We don't want the money to be spent the wrong way or wasted the way it happened to some degree with tobacco," he said. "We're looking at this recovery holistically. You have to look at the supply and have to look at the demand. You have to look at education and prevention. So the goal is going to be to set up a structure that is going to last the test of time, but also is going to be able to get money out immediately to put the infrastructure in place to ensure that another generation doesn't fall prey."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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