MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont and New York will both get part of a multimillion-dollar national settlement from an ad agency that developed marketing campaigns for Oxycontin and other prescription painkillers.
Attorneys general from the 10 states involved said Thursday that Publicis Health agreed to pay a $350 million settlement over the next two months rather than face the possibility of trials over its role in the opioid crisis.
Vermont will get over $1 million as its share of the settlement; New York will get $19 million. Most of the money will be used to fight the overdose epidemic. Publicis will also release thousands of internal documents detailing its work for companies that made opioids.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led negotiations with the company, said materials Publicis made for the marketing of opioids played up abuse-deterrent properties of the drugs and promoted increasing patients’ doses.
The company said the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing and noted that most of the work subject to the settlement was done by a company owned by Publicis, Rosetta, that closed 10 years ago.
It is the first ad agency with a major settlement over the toll of opioids in the U.S.