McHenry County will receive more than $3.4 million from a settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors as part of litigation into the opioid crisis.
The McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office negotiated the $3.41 million settlement with a number of opioid manufacturers and distributors, not including Purdue Pharma.
The $3.41 million is McHenry County’s portion of a $21 billion settlement reached with the three largest pharmaceutical distributors — McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, and manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and its parent company Johnson & Johnson.
The distributors will pay a maximum of $21 billion over 18 years, while Johnson & Johnson will pay a maximum of $5 billion over nine years, with approximately $22.8 billion in settlement proceeds payable to state and local municipalities.
The settlement is part of legal action taken by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and numerous state attorneys in Illinois and other states.
The settlement proceeds received by McHenry County will be spent on abatement programs designed to “combat the opioid crisis and its devastating effects,” McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said.
“No amount of money will ever be sufficient to reconcile the absolute desolation these companies have wrought in McHenry County and throughout the country,” Kenneally said in a statement.
“This is, however, a first step to holding accountable these loathsome industries that put self-serving deception over medical truth and corporate profit over human life,” he said.
The litigation with Purdue Pharma is ongoing, according to the state’s attorney’s office.