World News for Students of English

30-08-2019 07:00

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 200,000 people in the USA died from overdoses related to prescription opioids between 1999 and 2017.

The Sacler family owns Purdue Pharma, and it is one of the companies who people are suing over its alleged contribution to the opioid epidemic. Newsy reported on Wednesday that Purdue, which is the producer of OxyContin, was willing to pay out $10 billion to $12 billion to settle the more than 2,000 lawsuits against it.

The settlement means that people would restructure Purdue into a for-profit “public benefit trust.” The trust’s value would include more than $4 billion in drugs and profits from drug sales which would go to cities, counties and states. The Sacklers would also give up ownership of the company, and they would pay out at least $3 billion to the plaintiffs.

Difficult words: alleged (when something is not 100% sure to be true), contribution (a part which makes something happen – the epidemic), settle (pay somebody money for something bad that you did), plaintiff (a person who comes to a court of law because somebody did something bad to him or her).

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