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In patches of rural Appalachia and the Rust Belt, the health authorities were sounding alarms that a powerful painkiller called Opana had become the drug of choice among people abusing prescription pills, the New York Times reported. It was twice as potent as OxyContin, the painkiller widely blamed for sparking the opioid crisis, and was relatively easy to dissolve and inject. By 2015, government investigations and scientific publications had linked its misuse to clusters of disease, including a rare and life-threatening blood disorder and an H.I.V. outbreak in Indiana. Opana’s manufacturer, the pharmaceutical company Endo, had scaled back promotion of the drug. But months later, the company abruptly changed course, refocusing resources on the drug by assigning more sales representatives. The push was known internally as the Sales Force Blitz — and it was conducted with consultants at McKinsey & Company, who had been hired by Endo to provide marketing advice about its chronic-pain medicines and other products. A campaign by McKinsey and Endo to push the company's chronic-pain products, including Opana. The untold story of McKinsey’s work for Endo was among the revelations found by The New York Times in a repository of more than 100,000 documents obtained by a coalition of state attorneys general in a legal settlement related to McKinsey’s opioid work. Much has been disclosed over the years about McKinsey’s relationship with Purdue Pharma, including the consulting firm’s recommendation that the drug maker “turbocharge” its sales of OxyContin. But The Times found that the firm played a far deeper and broader role in advising clients involved in the opioid crisis than was publicly disclosed. The newly released McKinsey records include more than 15 years of emails, slide presentations, spreadsheets, proposals and other documents. They provide a sweeping and detailed depiction of a firm that became a trusted adviser to companies at the core of an epidemic that has claimed half a million American lives.

Oklahoma has reached a $250 million settlement with AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp to resolve allegations the drug distributors contributed to the opioid epidemic in the state, Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor said on Monday, Reuters reported. O'Connor said Oklahoma recovered more money from the distributors than the state would have received if it had joined a nationwide $26 billion settlement that was announced last year. The national settlement also includes Johnson & Johnson. Oklahoma sued J&J separately, but in November the case was thrown out on appeal, negating a $465 million trial judgment and undermining Oklahoma's legal theories in its opioid litigation. AmerisourceBergen said drug distributors have been forced to "walk a legal and ethical tightrope" without clearer regulatory guidance on how to protect consumers from legal but potentially dangerous drugs.

A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday put on hold the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on sales of Juul Labs Inc.’s e-cigarettes, after the company appealed the health agency’s order and said the ban would cause it “irreparable harm,” Reuters reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Of Columbia Circuit said the purpose of the stay was to allow the court sufficient time to consider Juul’s briefing for an emergency review and not a ruling on the merits of that motion. The once red-hot vape company has also been working with its legal advisers on options that include a possible bankruptcy filing if it is unable to get relief from the government’s ban, the Wall Street Journal reported. Juul’s counsel Kirkland & Ellis is advising on the contingency plans, according to the report. The FDA said on Thursday that Juul failed to show the sale of its products would be appropriate for public health, following a nearly two-year-long review of data provided by the company. Juul, partly owned by tobacco giant Altria Group Inc, said it disagreed with the agency’s findings. The temporary freeze on the FDA order lasts at least until July 12, according to the court’s scheduling order.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Bayer AG's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages, Reuters reported. The justices turned away a Bayer appeal and left in place a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers. The Supreme Court's action dealt a blow to Bayer as the company maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases. The justices have a second petition pending on a related issue that they could act upon in the coming weeks. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration in May urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, reversing the government's position previously taken under former President Donald Trump. Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each, while also winning four trials. Bayer had pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer said it "respectfully disagrees" with the court's decision and that the company is "fully prepared to manage the litigation risk associated with potential future claims in the U.S." On Friday, a federal appeals court ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a fresh look at whether the active ingredient glyphosate poses unreasonable risks to humans and the environment. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with several environmental, farm worker and food safety advocacy groups that the EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and threatens endangered species.

Randolph Health, a 145-bed community hospital in central North Carolina, declared bankruptcy in March 2020 and might have closed for good if it had not received $14.5 million in federal emergency pandemic grants, the Washington Post reported. The cash didn’t cover all its COVID-related losses, but at least Randolph could make payroll. “Every penny of that was critical and we were just thankful,” said Reynolds Lisk, a former Randolph board member who was born in the hospital in 1957 and fought to save it. “It literally enabled us to continue to operate.” The money flowing from Washington was barely enough to keep Randolph afloat — but those funds proved to be a windfall for Atrium Health, a regional nonprofit hospital chain headquartered in Charlotte. Atrium got $617 million in government relief from April 2020 to December 2021. The money, along with a soaring stock market and surging payments for patient care, helped it reap more than a billion dollars in surplus revenue last year. Atrium bulked up with two mergers and announced plans for a third during the pandemic. It boosted its CEO’s compensation by 24 percent, to $9.8 million. The vastly different experiences illustrate the unintended consequences of a $178 billion bailout that Congress dumped into the national health-care system at the start of the pandemic in an urgent attempt to keep hospitals and doctors afloat. Two years later, data show that the money indeed served as a lifeline for many hospitals that might not have withstood the onslaught of the coronavirus — but the funds also exacerbated the gap between the industry’s haves and have-nots, disproportionately rewarding wealthy hospitals that did not need the money as urgently. Many institutions reported strong profits and pursued growth strategies without pause.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday announced that her office secured up to $58.5 million from one of the largest drug manufacturers of opioids in the country, Mallinckrodt plc (Mallinckrodt), for its role in fueling the opioid crisis, according to a press release. Mallinckrodt used deceptive and misleading marketing tactics to encourage use of its highly addictive opioids that harmed communities across the country. Mallinckrodt entered into bankruptcy proceedings shortly after Attorney General James filed a lawsuit against the company in March 2019. Today’s agreement resolves those claims and raises the total amount secured by Attorney General James from opioid manufacturers and distributors to more than $1.5 billion to combat the opioid crisis. This is the second agreement that Attorney General James has reached with Mallinckrodt related to harm it caused New Yorkers. Earlier, Attorney General James announced that Mallinckrodt would pay $26.8 million for Medicaid fraud.

Pompano Beach, Fla.-based Stimwave Technologies and its affiliate, Stimwave LLC, filed chapter 11 reorganization to sell their assets, the South Florida Business Journal reported. The companies announced New York-based Kennedy Lewis Management agreed to buy their assets and would also provide up to $40 million in debtor-in-possession financing to support Stimwave during bankruptcy. The companies produce neurostimulation devices that aim to relieve chronic pain. In 2018, Stimwave received a $60 million venture capital investment, the largest in South Florida that year. Both companies filed for chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on June 15. Stimwave Technologies listed assets between $50 million and $100 million, with liabilities from $10 million to $50 million. The largest unsecured creditor was Palm Harbor-based Oscor Inc., with $616,690 owed over inventory payments.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge said yesterday that he may allow some lawsuits that accuse Johnson & Johnson talc products of causing cancer to proceed while the company's subsidiary seeks a national settlement of the claims in bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, N.J., said that he would consider "two very different paths forward" for the bankruptcy at a July 6 hearing. The company wants the bankruptcy court to estimate the number and value of talc claims, while plaintiffs in the talc lawsuits have asked the court to allow some cases to resume outside of the bankruptcy court. J&J, which maintains that its Baby Powder and other talc products are safe, assigned its talc liabilities to a new subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, and placed it in bankruptcy in October, pausing 38,000 lawsuits that had been filed against J&J. The talc claimants have appealed Kaplan's decision to allow the bankruptcy case to block their lawsuits, and the two sides remain far apart in recent mediation. LTL attorney Greg Gordon of Jones Day said the bankruptcy court should estimate the overall value of talc claims to impose "discipline" on settlement talks. David Molton of Brown Rudnick, an attorney for the talc claimants , said that LTL's approach would cause the case to "malinger" and "fester," just like other bankruptcies involving asbestos claims. At least 300 cancer victims with claims against J&J have died since the LTL case was filed, Molton said.

Mallinckrodt plc on Monday announced that it expects to complete its reorganization process, emerge from chapter 11 and complete the Irish Examinership proceedings in the coming days, according to a press release. On the effective date of emergence, all of Mallinckrodt's existing ordinary shares will be canceled pursuant to the company's reorganization plan and the Irish scheme of arrangement. Mallinckrodt expects to issue at emergence 13,170,932 new ordinary shares to its guaranteed unsecured noteholders in accordance with the provisions of the plan and the scheme. In accordance with the plan, Mallinckrodt also expects to issue at emergence to the opioid claimants 3,290,675 warrants, with a strike price of $103.40, and to adopt at emergence a management incentive plan providing for the issuance to management, key employees and directors of the company of equity awards with respect to up to an aggregate of 1,829,068 shares. Mallinckrodt's new shares are anticipated to trade over-the-counter until such time as the Company relists on a national securities exchange.

States opposed to a proposed $3 million bonus for the CEO of bankrupt Purdue Pharma L.P. should “move on” and support a proposal to donate the funds to a nonprofit that helps opioid victims, unsecured creditors say, Bloomberg Law reported. The unsecured creditors' committee said in a filing yesterday that it’s “not pleased” that CEO Craig Landau remains in his position, nor does it support paying him the proposed bonus, as the opioid-maker wants. But the New York bankruptcy court has, in previous years, approved similar proposals by Purdue , the committee noted. And the current proposal allows parties to try to claw back payments made to Landau if it’s found that he knowingly participated in any criminal misconduct in connection to Purdue or other activities, it said. “While not a perfect solution, this provision balances the debtors’ desire to compensate their employees with concerns regarding such employees’ potential responsibility for the debtors’ role in the opioid crisis,” the committee said. No party has shown that Landau engaged in conduct that warrants disgorgement of the money, the committee said. Instead, it suggested the states join its request for Landau or Purdue to donate some or all of the bonus to a nonprofit that fights the opioid crisis.