Pharma Giant Purdue Sentenced to $5.5 Billion For ‘Fueling The Opioid Epidemic’

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma was sentenced in a New Jersey federal court on Tuesday to pay over $5 billion in criminal penalties for “fueling” the U.S.’ opioid epidemic.

From 2007 and 2017, Purdue unlawfully promoted its opioid products to hundreds of prescribers it had reason to suspect were issuing prescriptions without a legitimate medical purpose, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced. The company also misled the Drug Enforcement Administration about how effective its anti-diversion programs were and relied on counts from questionable prescribers to support deceptive requests to increase production quotas, the Department said. 

Additionally, Purdue paid kickbacks to prescribers through its doctor speaker program and to an electronic health record platform, according to the DOJ.

“Purdue Pharma put profits over patient health and safety,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “The company willfully rejected the law and ignored the diversion of their highly addictive prescription drugs. Their actions contributed to the opioid crisis that claimed countless lives and destroyed entire families and communities.”

“Today’s sentence is a prime example of the Department’s effort to redress past wrongs by rooting out and punishing unlawful conduct by companies that have contributed to the national crisis,” Blanche continued.

“On April 28, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey sentenced Purdue Pharma L.P. in connection with its 2020 Plea Agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice,” Purdue said in a statement on its website. “Purdue is operating as usual and without interruption until May 1, 2026, when it will permanently cease operations. On that day, substantially all of Purdue’s assets will be transferred to a newly formed company, Knoa Pharma LLC. Medicines distributed though Purdue will then be distributed by Knoa Pharma.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that the U.S.’ opioid epidemic “is a plague that has ruined lives and destroyed families.”

“Purdue Pharma complicitly contributed to this national epidemic in the name of their own greed by blatantly ignoring the health and safety of patients putting countless lives at risk,” Patel added. “The FBI and our DOJ partners will always work tirelessly to ensure that companies, like Pharma, pay for the harm they have inflicted and warn others that they will not get away with violating the law for personal gain.”

In January 2025, Connecticut’s attorney general announced that Purdue and the Sackler family agreed to a $7.4 billion settlement with opioid crisis victims and a bipartisan group of 15 states. Tuesday’s sentencing allows Purdue to proceed with dissolving through bankruptcy and to utilize its assets to help fund the settlement, CNBC reported.

Before approving the plea deal, U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo in Newark listened to nearly seven hours of testimony from individuals who spoke about the company’s part in contributing to the nation’s opioid crisis, according to CNBC. More than 200 victims submitted letters describing personal experiences with opioid addiction and loss and over 40 people delivered statements in court, per the outlet.

As of 2022, almost 1 in 3 U.S. adults said that they or a family member have been addicted to opioids, KFF reported in February. An estimated 1.2 million people in the U.S. and Canada will die from opioid overdoses over the next decade without urgent intervention, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health reported in February 2022, citing a study from the Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis.