The Maui News

Hawaii is expected to receive more than $73 million to fight the opioid crisis as part of a historic $26 billion agreement with the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors and Johnson & Johnson.

Following successful state sign-on and subdivision sign-on periods, the defendants will start releasing funds to a national administrator on April 2, with money flowing to state and local governments in the second quarter of this year, Hawaii Attorney General Holly Shikada announced Monday along with the mayors and corporation counsels of all four counties.

“These settlements do not complete our fight against those who created and fostered the nationwide opioid problem,” Shikada said in a news release. “But with the assistance of our counties, these settlements are a major step forward in finding and funding better solutions.

The agreement with Cardinal Health, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Johnson & Johnson marks the culmination of three years of negotiations to resolve more than 4,000 claims of state and local governments across the country, according to a news release from the state Department of the Attorney General. It is the second-largest multistate agreement in U.S. history, second only to the Tobacco Master Settlement agreement.

Fifty-two states and territories have signed on to the agreement as well as thousands of local governments across the country, including all four counties in Hawaii. As a result, Hawaii will receive its full share of approximately $73 million, most of which will go to support treatment, recovery, harm reduction and other strategies to address the opioid epidemic.

“Maui is thankful to the Attorney General’s Office for negotiating such a substantial settlement that will benefit our county and the State of Hawaii,” the County of Maui said in the news release.

In addition to the funds, the three drug distributors will also:

• Establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to provide all three distributors and state regulators with aggregated data and analytics about where drugs are going and how often, eliminating blind spots in the current systems used by distributors.

• Use data-driven systems to detect suspicious opioid orders from customer pharmacies.

• Terminate customer pharmacies’ ability to receive shipments, and report those companies to state regulators, when they show certain signs of diversion.

• Prohibit shipping of and report suspicious opioid orders.

• Prohibit sales staff from influencing decisions related to identifying suspicious opioid orders.

• Require senior corporate officials to engage in regular oversight of anti-diversion efforts.

Johnson & Johnson is required to:

• Stop selling opioids.

• Not fund or provide grants to third parties for promoting opioids.

• Not lobby on activities related to opioids.

• Share clinical trial data under the Yale University Open Data Access Project.