Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma is proposing a global settlement in an attempt to end state investigations and lawsuits over the U.S. opioid epidemic, according to people familiar with the talks.
Purdue's lawyers raised the prospect with several southern-state attorneys general who haven't sued the company, as they try to gauge interest for a more wide-ranging deal, said four people who asked not to be identified because the talks aren't public.
Opioid makers are accused of creating a public-health crisis through their marketing of the painkillers. More than a dozen states and about 100 counties and cities already sued Purdue, other opioid makers and drug distributors, in a strategy echoing the litigation that led to the 1998 $246 billion settlement with Big Tobacco.