Consulting Firm McKinsey Pays $600 Million Settlement For Its Role In the Opioid Epidemic

On Thursday, consulting firm McKinsey & Company agreed to pay just under $600 million to account for its role in advising businesses on how to sell opioid painkillers even while the opioid crisis was occurring in the United States. Most of that money is part of a $573 million settlement that McKinsey reached with 47 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories, and Washington and West Virginia have each announced separate individual settlements with the company—Washington for $13.5 million and West Virginia for $10 million. The only state that has yet to announce a deal with McKinsey is Nevada, where the investigation of the consulting firm is still ongoing.

The opioid crisis is responsible for the deaths of over 470,000 people across the country, but the role McKinsey played in this epidemic only recently came to light during OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s attempts to settle claims made against their own company through bankruptcy court. Documents revealed that McKinsey worked with Purdue to boost opioid sales even after the scale of the national addiction crisis was becoming obvious, specifically encouraging Purdue sales representatives to target doctors who already prescribed high volumes of OxyContin.