A New York City-based healthcare advertising company reached a countrywide settlement Thursday requiring it pay $350 million for its role in the opioid epidemic, according to official statements.
Publicis Health, LLC “shall pay Settling States a total amount of $350,000,000” within 60 days, court papers shared in a statement by New York Attorney General Letitia James showed. The agreement is “without trial or adjudication of any issue of fact or law, and without finding or admission of wrongdoing or liability of any kind,” the papers added.
Publicis helped the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma market opioids such as OxyContin, Butrans and Hysingla using predatory and deceptive marketing strategies, the statement claimed. One such strategy, the “Evolve to Excellence” scheme, allegedly flooded doctors with messaging claiming OxyContin had abuse-deterrent properties and was beneficial at higher doses, according to the statement.
“For a decade, Publicis helped opioid manufacturers like Purdue Pharma convince doctors to overprescribe opioids, directly fueling the opioid crisis and causing the devastation of communities nationwide,” James said in the statement.
Rosetta, a now-defunct agency formerly owned by Publicis, was responsible for the opioid advertising, Publicis said in a statement. “The full settlement amount should quickly and directly contribute to the States’ opioid relief effort,” the statement read in part. (RELATED: Retail Giant To Pay Over $1 Billion In Opioid Settlement)
There were three waves of opioid overdose deaths nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The first, involving natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone, began in the 1990s and has risen since 1999. The second, involving heroin, began in 2010. The third, involving synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl, began in 2013.
Nearly 645,000 people died from an overdose involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids between 1999 and 2021, the CDC said.
4,233 New Yorkers died as a result of an opioid-involved overdose in 2020 — up from 1,074 in 2010 — and a New Yorker died of opioid overdose every two hours as of November 2022, James’s statement noted.
“[W]e are also reaffirming our long-standing decision to turn down any future opioid-related projects,” Publicis said in its statement.