Silver State Times

Carson City, NV – On June 07, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced that Nevada will receive approximately $193 million from Teva Pharmaceuticals after the company agreed to a settlement regarding its role in the opioid epidemic. With this settlement, the Office of the Attorney General under AG Ford has brought in a gross amount of over $849 million in opioid litigation-related monies to Nevada.“This settlement is the most recent example of my office’s work to hold accountable those who contributed to the opioid epidemic facing Nevadans,” said AG Ford. “I am proud of the work that my office has done in this fight. The money coming into Nevada from these settlements will help our state recover and will help resources flow to the Nevadans impacted by this epidemic.”Teva will make annual payments to Nevada beginning in July 2024 through July 2043. These payments will increase on a sliding scale, beginning at $7 million and increasing to $9 million in 2037 and $27 million in 2042. The money will be divided between the state and the signatories of the One Nevada Agreement on Allocation of Opioid Recoveries.

Teva negotiated in good faith and the settlement includes injunctive relief terms to stop possible misuse of opioids and the furtherance of the opioid epidemic. In addition to the monetary relief, the settlement requires Teva, among other things, to ban the promotion of opioids and opioid products; to ban financial incentives for the sale of opioids; to ban funding to third parties that promote opioids; to impose lobbying restrictions; to develop and implement monitoring programs, including for off-label use of opioids; to ban high dose opioids to ban prescription savings programs for opioids; to monitor and report downstream customers with risks of diversion of opioids; and to provide regular training to its employees.

Previously, the state, along with all Nevada counties and cities that currently have active litigation against opioid companies, came to an agreement on the intrastate allocation of funds from opioid-related recoveries. This One Nevada Agreement on Allocation of Opioid Recoveries provides a framework for how funds from any Nevada opioid-related settlement will be fairly and equitably allocated among the state and various local governmental entities and used to remediate the harms, impact and risks caused by the opioid epidemic in the state.In early 2021, the Legislature created the Fund for a Resilient Nevada, which directs state opioid recoveries to fund evidence-based programs through the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. The law required the state to develop a State Needs Assessment which identifies the critical needs for attacking the impacts and effects of opioids throughout the entire state, and a State Plan for prioritizing funding for the needs identified in said assessment. Read the Needs Assessment and Plan.

The law also creates a mechanism for the state, counties and cities to work together in developing county needs assessments and county plans that complement the State Needs Assessment and State Plan, therefore maximizing the use of the money from recoveries.

Original source can be found here.