Cobb to receive $3.5M from opioid settlement with Rite Aid

Cobb County commissioners will vote next week on acceptance of a $3.5 million settlement from pharmacy chain Rite Aid as part of a multi-jurisdictional lawsuit against opioid distributors and manufacturers.

The settlement, split between Cobb, Ohio’s Montgomery County, and North Carolina’s Durham County, totals $10.5 million, with the local governments to each receive a third of the sum.

Cobb first joined the lawsuit in 2018 as local and state governments nationwide began suing manufacturers like Purdue Pharma, which produces OxyContin, for damages from the opioid epidemic.

The settlement says the suit alleged “Rite Aid failed to effectively monitor and report suspicious orders of prescription opioids from its retail stores and failed to implement measures to prevent diversion of prescription opioids, which contributed to an increase in opioid addictions, overdoses, and deaths.”

Rite Aid admits no wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement. The company has sought to force its insurers to cover the $10.5 million sum, but if they fail to do so in a timely manner, Rite Aid will be compelled to advance the counties $1.25 million each.

Cobb’s claim was selected by a federal judge as one of several “bellwethers,” or test cases, from a much larger pool of litigation. County lawyers said in 2018 some 1,430 plaintiffs were involved in the case. The suit was set to go to trial next year, per a memo from County Attorney William Rowling.

County Manager Jackie McMorris, meanwhile, has established a committee to make recommendations for how best to allocate the funds.

Under the terms of the agreement, parties of the lawsuit are barred from publicizing or speaking to media members about the settlement. Rowling could not be reached for comment, and the county referred questions to the publicly-posted agenda items and documents for next week’s vote.

The Rite Aid lawsuit, however, appears to be separate from another opioid settlement the county joined in November with several of the nation’s largest drug distributors, along with Johnson & Johnson.

Cobb’s participation in the settlement was contingent on the state agreeing to participate. Attorney General Chris Carr announced in January Georgia would sign onto that settlement, which totals some $26 billion nationwide and stands to pay Georgia and its local governments $636 million.

The Rite Aid settlement comes as Cobb continues to see triple-digit deaths each year caused by drug overdoses. According to the most recently available annual report from the county medical examiner, 180 people died of accidental drug deaths in 2020, more than in any of the five prior years. Fentanyl was present in 88 of those deaths, with other opioids accounting for 93 total deaths.

“Acute accidental drug toxicity deaths continue to be a significant portion of the deaths in Cobb County. Drug related deaths equal nearly one-quarter of the deaths investigated by the (office),” the medical examiner’s report said.

Nationally, overdose deaths skyrocketed to nearly 92,000 in 2020, per the Centers for Disease Control. Deaths involving synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl, made up more than 61%, or over 56,000.

Cobb commissioners will vote on the agreement at their meeting next Tuesday at 9 a.m., at 100 Cherokee Street in Marietta.