$600M Settlement Reached Over Opioid Addiction Drug Suboxone

$600M Settlement Reached Over Opioid Addiction Drug Suboxone

Introduction

On Friday, Indivior PLC, a Chesterfield County-based drug company, agreed to pay $600 million after its subsidiary Indivior Solutions Inc., pleaded guilty in federal court in Abingdon over its opioid addiction treatment drug Suboxone.

According to the deal, the pharmaceutical company will pay the $600 million over seven years to federal and state authorities and has also agreed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to not engage in similar conduct and established a corporate integrity agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general.

In April, last year, a federal grand jury in western Virginia raised a criminal and civil liability lawsuit, investigated by the FTC, against Indivior claiming that it used fraudulent marketing practices to increase profits from Suboxone Film. The lawsuit was joined by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The court records indicate that the company pleaded guilty of making a false statement in 2012 and was charged with one count of health care fraud, four counts of mail fraud, and 22 counts of wire fraud, as well as other charges last year. The company has collectively paid more than $2 billion over the marketing of Suboxone, which includes a settlement of $1.4 billion reached last year with Indivior's former parent company Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC.

The current settlement comprises $289 million to end the criminal charges, including fines, forfeiture, and restitution; $300 million to end civil allegations from state and federal enforcers; and $10 million to settle charges claiming that the company violated the antitrust laws. The overall settlement is considered the largest-ever resolution in a case brought by the Department of Justice involving an opioid drug.

Earlier, Injured Workers Pharmacy (IWP), a national mail-order pharmacy based in Andover, Massachusetts, has agreed to pay $11 million over a lawsuit brought by the state alleging that the company illegally dispensed thousands of prescriptions for dangerous drugs, including opioids like fentanyl.

According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the pharmacy marketed a large number of opioids in Massachusetts between 2006 and 2012, which included 34.2 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills. Last year, Attorney General Maura Healey's office announced an investigation against the company, which sells the drugs to workers' compensation patients.

The investigation revealed that the pharmacy violated Massachusetts consumer protection laws as it did not have proper policies to determine if the prescriptions were valid, and practiced unlawful marketing methods like paying law firms for patient referrals.

Congresswoman Lori Trahan, D-Westford, appreciated Healey's work and stated that she introduced the Medication Access and Training Expansion Act, in the House, where the legislation has similar goals to the settlement agreement.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug. 

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an 'opioid crisis.'