“Beyond Outrageous”: Big Pharma Using Loophole To Get Taxpayers To Fund Billions In Fines For Fueling Opioid Crisis By Kenny Stancil for Natural Blaze
Four pharmaceutical corporations that agreed to pay a combined $26 billion to settle lawsuits resulting from a deadly opioid crisis they helped create reportedly plan to recoup a portion of those costs by deducting roughly $4.6 billion of the payouts from their taxes—sparking intense condemnation.
Big Pharma is attempting to make the public cover some of the fines related to lawsuits filed by dozens of state and local governments highlighting the culpability of opioid manufacturers and distributors in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people per year.
As Public Citizen president Robert Weissman put it in a statement released Friday, “The drug companies are settling with taxpayers (local government entities) and then demanding that taxpayers pay part of the cost (via a federal tax subsidy).”
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The Washington Post, which analyzed regulatory filings, reported Friday that “as details of the blockbuster settlement were still being worked out, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and the ‘big three’ drug distributors—McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health—all updated their financial projections to include large tax benefits stemming from the expected deal.”
Settle and deny guilt for fueling a deadly opioid epidemic? There’s a billion-dollar tax write off for that, drug companies claim. Great sleuthing by @dmac1 & @kevinschaul https://t.co/ACCGOfwAFz
— Aaron C. Davis (@byaaroncdavis) February 12, 2021
Weissman called it “beyond outrageous for the drug makers and distributors to take a tax deduction for their settlement of city and county claims relating to the drug companies’ alleged role in creating and worsening the opioid addiction epidemic.”
“Making this scheme even more infuriating,” he added, “is that the opioid manufacturer and distributor companies are preparing to claim billions in tax subsidies via a Covid-19 relief provision.”
