Press Releases
12/12/2022
Attorney General Tong Announces Agreements with CVS and Walgreens Delivering $10.7 Billion to Fight Opioid Epidemic
AG Tong Helps Lead Bipartisan Negotiations, Brings Total Recoveries from Drug Industry to More than $50 Billion
(Hartford, CT) -- Attorney General William Tong today announced agreements with CVS and Walgreens to deliver $10.7 billion nationwide to save lives and fight the opioid epidemic. Today’s announcement brings the total recovered from investigations and litigation against the pharmaceutical addiction industry to more than $50 billion. Connecticut will receive about $127 million from these latest settlements, bringing the state’s total recovery to over $600 million, which will be used to support opioid abuse treatment and prevention.Under today’s agreements, CVS will pay $5 billion and Walgreens will pay $5.7 billion, totaling $10.7 billion. Adding the recently announced settlement with Walmart, the three major chain pharmacies will pay a total of nearly $14 billion, with Connecticut set to receive about $162 million.
“One by one, we are holding every player in the addiction industry accountable and forcing them to turn over billions of dollars for treatment and prevention nationwide. CVS and Walgreens flooded our cities and towns with bottles upon bottles of pills with callous disregard for the suffering their actions caused. Our settlement mandates significant changes to their business practices, including court-ordered monitoring to ensure the checks and balances that should have been in place all along will now be aggressively enforced,” said Attorney General Tong. “As with prior opioid settlement funds, Connecticut’s $127 million share from these agreements will be used to support opioid treatment and prevention, and to save lives in communities across Connecticut.”
In addition to the financial settlement, CVS and Walgreens, along with Walmart earlier, have agreed to court-ordered injunctive relief that requires the pharmacies to monitor, report, and share data about suspicious activity related to opioid prescriptions. This court-ordered injunctive relief will help ensure a crisis like this does not happen again.
The terms of this agreement will now go to the states for their review. Each state will have until the end of 2022 to join, after which the Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS agreements will go to local governments around the country for sign-on during the first quarter of 2023. Connecticut intends to join the agreements. Nearly all of the settlement funds must be used to remediate the opioid crisis, including prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery services.
The payments are structured to ensure critical support in early years as well as sustained resources over time. Most of Walmart’s amount will be paid during the first year; CVS’s payments will be spread over 10 years; Walgreens' payments will be spread over 15 years. If there is sufficient sign-on, payments should begin during the second half of 2023.
Attorney General Tong was joined by the attorneys general of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas in leading these negotiations.
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Media Contact:
Elizabeth Benton
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