Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. agreed to pay $85 million to settle an Oklahoma lawsuit claiming that illegal marketing of its opioid painkillers contributed to a public health crisis in the state.
Oklahoma said J&J and Teva helped create a public-health crisis from opioid abuse that killed thousands of its residents. The state, in its lawsuit, accused the companies of overstating the painkillers’ benefits and understating their risks, which created a “devastating cycle of over-prescription’’ that was “built on addiction, dependence and a market saturated with misinformation regarding the benefits and safety of those drugs.”