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1 1 (February 19, 2025)

handle is hein.crs/govesne0001 and id is 1 raw text is: National Opioid Litigation: Settlement Agreements as of January 2025 February 19, 2025 According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over a million Americans have died of opioid-involved overdoses since 1999, with deaths rising by 67% between 2017 and 2023. This increase in opioid-involved deaths since 1999 is often described as having occurred in several waves, including an initial wave attributable to the misuse and diversion of prescription opioids (e.g., OxyContin); a second wave attributable to the increased availability of heroin; and a third wave attributable to the misuse of pharmaceutical fentanyl and increased availability of illicit, non- pharmaceutical fentanyl. While 2023 saw the first annual decrease in opioid-involved deaths since 2018, with the trend continuing in 2024, the death toll remains high relative to the beginning of the opioid crisis. In response to the opioid crisis, federal, state, and local governments have undertaken numerous measures to curb opioid misuse and drug-related overdose deaths. Congress enacted several laws intended to address the crisis in part by providing federal funds to expand the availability of substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery services nationwide. In addition to receiving these federal funds, state and local governments at the forefront of the opioid crisis buttressed their efforts to address the crisis by pursuing a substantial number of civil lawsuits against entities along the prescription opioid supply chain. These lawsuits-numbered in the thousands and filed all over the United States beginning around 2017-typically alleged that the supply chain entities engaged in various conduct, such as misleading promotion or inadequate control of prescription opioids, that fueled the initial wave of the opioid crisis. After several years of litigation, many of the parties in these lawsuits have reached finalized national settlement agreements under which state and local governments have begun to receive payments to be used to abate the opioid crisis. This Sidebar answers several frequently asked questions about those settlement agreements and highlights certain selected considerations for Congress. What Are the National Opioid Settlement Agreements? The national opioid settlement agreements each resolved the majority, if not all, of claims asserted by state and local governments from across the country against a particular settling prescription opioid supply chain entity. Table 1 summarizes the key terms of the national opioid settlement agreements that have been finalized to date. The supply chain entities that are parties to these agreements include those Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11270 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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