US pharmacy groups CVS and Walgreens agree $10bn opioid settlements

US pharmacy groups CVS Health and Walgreens have agreed to pay almost $10bn to settle most of the outstanding lawsuits over their prescription of powerful opioid painkillers.

They are the first settlements by pharmacy chains linked to their role in the opioids crisis in the US, which has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the country in recent years.

Other pharmacy chains, including Walmart, are also in settlement talks over the claims, which have been filed against them by US states and native American tribes. Walmart declined to comment.

CVS said on Wednesday that it had agreed “in principle to a financial resolution designed to substantially resolve all opioid lawsuits”.

If all conditions are satisfied, the company will pay $4.9bn to states and $130mn to tribes over the next 10 years, it said.

“The agreement would fully resolve claims dating back a decade or more and is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing,” the company added, as it released third-quarter results. “CVS Health will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve.”

Walgreens said it had reached an agreement in principle to cover a “substantial majority” of opioids lawsuits filed against it by states, which would result in payments of about $4.79bn over 15 years. It expects to pay an additional $154mn to native American tribes under the settlement.

Walgreens said the settlements included no admission of wrongdoing or liability by the company.

Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that CVS, Walmart and Walgreens had reached a tentative $12bn opioid settlement deal.

The negotiating team in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, a group of senior lawyers that has been working on the opioids lawsuits, said the in-principle agreements reached with CVS and Walgreens “are an important step in our efforts to hold pharmacy defendants accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic”.

“Once effectuated, these agreements will be the first resolutions reached with pharmacy chains and will equip communities across the country with the much-needed tools to fight back against this epidemic and bring about tangible, positive change,” said the NPOL.

“In addition to payments totalling billions of dollars, these companies have committed to making significant improvements to their dispensing practices to help reduce addiction moving forward.”

In November 2021 a US federal jury delivered a landmark verdict against CVS, Walmart and Walgreens, finding they had contributed to the opioids crisis. The judgment found that pharmacy chains had created a public nuisance in the way they dispensed opioids and dismissed arguments that doctors and drug manufacturers were primarily to blame for the crisis.

The agreements with CVS and Walgreens are the latest in a series of settlements related to the opioids crisis.

In February US states finalised a $26bn settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three of the biggest drug distributors in the US — McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen — to resolve allegations that the companies contributed to the epidemic.