499 - How States Can Spend Billions From Opioid Litigation to Curb the Opioid Epidemic
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2022
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
Settlements with opioid giants like Purdue, Johnson & Johnson, and Cardinal Health have resulted in billions of dollars paid out to states and municipalities. Sara Whaley, a coordinator for a project called Principles for the Use of Funds from Opioid Litigation, talks with Lindsay Smith Rogers about five guidelines these entities can follow to use the funds in ways that will actually address the nation's ongoing opioid epidemic. Learn more at opioidprinciples.jhsph.edu.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:17.1 | and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore. |
| 0:19.7 | Our goal is to bring evidence and experience to illuminate critical public health issues. |
| 0:25.4 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:31.6 | That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:41.3 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health On episodes. Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, we're discussing how states and municipalities can responsibly spend billions of dollars |
| 0:46.8 | from opioid settlements. |
| 0:48.3 | I talk with Sarah Whaley, a coordinator for a project called Principles for the Use |
| 0:52.8 | of Funds from Opioid Litigation, |
| 0:54.4 | about five guidelines for spending funds in ways that actually address the nation's opioid epidemic. |
| 1:01.2 | Learn more at Opioidprincipals.jhspHspHPH.ch.org.org. Let's listen. Sarah Whaley, thank you so much for joining us on |
| 1:15.7 | public health on call. You are one of the coordinators of a project, principles for the use of |
| 1:21.6 | funds from opioid litigation. Can you start by telling us what you mean by funds from |
| 1:26.6 | opioid litigation? Yeah, Lindsay, you mean by funds from opioid litigation? |
| 1:28.6 | Yeah, Lindsay. |
| 1:41.8 | So the funds from the opioid litigation are dollars that are going to come down to state, cities, counties from over 3,000 different lawsuits where the plaintiffs are these cities, counties, and states and sovereign nations. |
| 1:46.7 | And they're suing the defendants who are big pharma. These are the big players in opioid manufacturing, distributing, and then the retailers. So these are pharmacies like |
| 1:53.3 | CBS, Walgreens, and Walmart. So the lawsuits are going to eventually end, and there will be |
| 2:00.4 | dollars that come down from them to these |
| 2:02.5 | localities. How many dollars are we talking about here? Yeah. So it's still in process, but we're |
| 2:09.0 | estimating somewhere around $32 billion. And some of this has already come out, right? Some of the |
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