State Attorney General Announces Disappointment in Purdue Bankruptcy Plan

Thursday, March 18, 2021 | 0

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office announced that Becerra is among 24 attorneys general in the U.S. who have expressed disappointment after hearing about opioid giant Purdue Pharma’s plans to emerge from bankruptcy.

Attorney General
Xavier Becerra

“We are disappointed in this plan,” Becerra and others said in a joint statement. “While it contains improvements over the proposal that Purdue announced and we rejected in September 2019, it falls short of the accountability that families and survivors deserve.”

The statement calls the Sackler-family-run company a "criminal enterprise” and chastises the company for “decades of misconduct and their role in creating this crisis.”

Purdue, which created the powerful and widely used drug OxyContin, on Monday proposed a $10 billion plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection. 

Under the plan, Purdue would transform into a company that uses its profits to help fight the nation’s opioid crisis, according to media reports on the proposed plan.

The plan includes an offer to settle more than 2,900 lawsuits filed against Purdue, and the Sacklers would give more than $4 billion of their own money toward anti-epidemic efforts, according to reports.

Becerra and the other attorneys general have called on Purdue to amend its bankruptcy plan to include more money for states to help fight the opioid crisis. The statement also calls for an “orderly wind-down of the company that does not excessively entangle it with states and other creditors.”

The joint statement was issued by attorneys general in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.