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L 110- <br />The Office of <br />Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison <br />helping people afford their lives and live with dignity and respect • www.ag.state.mn.us <br />TO LOCAL POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS: <br />IMPORTANT INFORMATIONABOUT THE NATIONAL OPIOID SETTLEMENT. <br />SUBDIVIMONS MUST SUBMIT SIGNED DOCUMENTATION TO PARTICIPATE. <br />THE DEADLINE FOR PARTICIPATION TO MAXIMIZE SETTLEMENT BENEFITS IS JANUAR Y2, 2022. <br />If your subdivision is represented by an attorney with respect to opioid claims, please immediately contact them. <br />After years of negotiations, two proposed nationwide settlement agreements ("Settlements") have been reached <br />that would resolve all opioid litigation brought by states and local political subdivisions against the three largest <br />pharmaceutical distributors, McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen ("Distributors"), and one <br />manufacturer, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and its parent company Johnson & Johnson (collectively, "Janssen"). <br />The proposed Settlements require the Distributors and Janssen to pay billions of dollars to abate the opioid <br />epidemic. Specifically, the Settlements require the Distributors to pay up to $21 billion over 18 years and Janssen <br />to pay up to $5 billion over no more than 9 years, for a total of $26 billion (the "Settlement Amount"). Of the <br />Settlement Amount, approximately $22.7 billion is earmarked for use by participating states and subdivisions to <br />remediate and abate the impacts of the opioid crisis. <br />The Settlements also contain injunctive relief provisions governing the opioid marketing, sale and distribution <br />practices at the heart of the states' and subdivisions' lawsuits and further require the Distributors to implement <br />additional safeguards to prevent diversion of prescription opioids. <br />Each of the proposed Settlements has two key participation steps. First, each state decides whether to participate <br />in the Settlement. Minnesota has joined both Settlements. Second, the subdivisions within each participating state <br />must then decide whether to participate in the Settlements. Generally, the more subdivisions that participate, the <br />greater the amount of funds that flow to that state and its participating subdivisions. Any subdivision that does <br />not participate cannot directly share in any of the settlement funds, even if the subdivision's state is settling and <br />other participating subdivisions are sharing in settlement funds. <br />This letter is part of the formal notice required by the Settlements. <br />1 <br />