Purdue Pharma’s founding Sackler family has threatened to pull out of a proposed $4.5 billion agreement to settle lawsuits against the Oxycontin maker unless it is granted total immunity from all current and future claims against the company. Board member David Sackler said that absent that release from liability, Purdue, which is accused of contributing to the opioid epidemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans over the past two decades, would not support the deal. If approved, the agreement would bring to an end thousands of lawsuits against Purdue brought by states, cities, tribes, and other plaintiffs. But if the deal is scuttled by the lack of immunity for the billionaire Sackler family, Purdue says it would continue the legal fight—possibly for years—thereby depriving compensation to local and state governments that bore the cost of the addiction crisis, as well as to victims’ families. Under the terms of the deal, the family would relinquish control of Purdue, which would transform it into a public benefit company to fund the settlement over a decade. But it would allow the Sacklers to continue their international pharmaceutical business including marketing opioids for up to seven years.
Meanwhile, although there have been advances made in machine learning algorithms that may be able to determine the risk of a drug overdose, a new study published in JAMA finds that such algorithms may be biased—and therefore miss patients at high risk of opioid misuse. The study concluded that Black patients at high risk were almost twice as likely to be missed as white patients. And those that fell in the false-negative group also had a higher mortality risk. Such bias could keep these patients from receiving education and treatment options, the study showed.
And finally, marijuana legalization and changing attitudes and perceptions about pot have led to a staggering increase in consumption, according to a Gallup poll. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they have tried the drug has ticked up to 49 percent—the highest measured to date. More than 50 years ago, just 4 percent admitted to using marijuana; that had climbed to 40 percent in 2015. By age group, around 50 percent of millennials, Generation Xers, and baby boomers have tried pot. But it is younger Americans who are more likely to have smoked marijuana (20 percent of millennials), suggesting that people tend to try marijuana at a younger age but as they get older, most no longer continue smoking it.