The Strategist

McKinsey to pay $230M more to settle opioid scandal in US



09/29/2023 - 03:37



The consulting firm McKinsey has agreed to pay $230 million in order to resolve claims of municipalities and school districts in the proceedings on the conditions of the opioid epidemic.



sharyn morrow
sharyn morrow
Reuters has reported the news referring statement submitted in federal court in San Francisco. In the past, McKinsey has already spent $640 million to resolve out-of-court litigation from 49 states and the District of Columbia that made the same claims.

Municipalities will receive $207 million and school districts will receive $23 million of the $230 million, with McKinsey stressing that its consultancy work was done legally and not admitting any wrongdoing.

In 2019, the business stopped giving clients advice on matters involving opioids. Prior to that, as part of its consulting job, the company helped pharmaceutical companies to boost sales and advertising of such products.

When it became clear that the number of overdoses was on par with an epidemic, a scandal surrounding prescription opioid overdoses, notably those using oxycodone (marketed under the name OxyContin) and hydrocodone (marketed under the name Vicodin), exploded in the US in the 2010s. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that close to 2 million Americans misused or became addicted on prescription opioids in just 2014.

source: reuters.com