Mississippi is one step closer to receiving nearly $41 million from the prescription pain manufacturing company Purdue Pharma after a federal bankruptcy judge in New York said he will approve a plan to recoup billions of dollars from the Sackler family for its role in contributing to hundreds of thousands of American overdose deaths. 

Purdue developed and patented the drug OxyContin in 1996. The prescription painkiller is an opioid, a class of drugs that can relieve pain but can also be highly addictive and debilitating. For years, company officials and the Sacklers, the family that owned the company, downplayed the risk of OxyContin, even as evidence mounted that its frequent prescriptions were leading to more overdose deaths across the country.

Although physicians prescribed fewer bottles of OxyContin and other opioid painkillers over the last decade, research indicates the legacy of Purdue’s marketing campaigns continue to jeopardize American lives. People addicted to prescription painkillers often switched to using illicit opioids, like heroin and fentanyl, when pills became less available. A 2023 Yale study found that states where the company’s marketing was less regulated continue to have higher rates of fentanyl overdoses and infections related to injection drug use, such as hepatitis C.

The company has pleaded guilty for its marketing of OxyContin in the past, but it and the Sackler family have largely avoided the large national lawsuit payouts other companies have agreed to by filing for bankruptcy in 2019. A previous proposal would have required the family to pay up to $6 billion throughout the United States, but the Supreme Court rejected that settlement in June 2024 because of its civil lawsuit protections for the Sacklers. 

The new settlement, agreed to by state attorneys general in June, instructs the Sacklers to pay $7.4 billion to the states and doesn’t include the same legal shields for the Sacklers. Mississippi is set to receive its nearly $41 million share of that over the next 15 years. 

If finalized, Purdue’s payout brings Mississippi’s contributions from companies to around $421 million in reparations for their roles in the opioid epidemic — a public health catastrophe that has killed over 10,000 Mississippians. Health services in the state responded to close to 5,500 non-fatal overdoses just in the first seven months of 2025, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

Purdue’s settlement is subject to similar rules as the previous opioid lawsuits — 70% must be used for future strategies to address addiction, and the remaining 30% can be used for any other public purpose. 

The Legislature and 147 Mississippi local governments will split that 30%, or $12.3 million. So far, few of those local governments’ leaders have chosen to use their money to address the crisis Purdue and the other companies contributed to. Those decisions and delays in the state portion of the opioid settlements have led to Mississippi having committed less lawsuit money to prevent overdoses than every other state in the country as of this summer — both in total dollars and as a percentage of settlement shares.

The 70%, or $28.7 million, that does need to be spent on addiction-related purposes will be overseen by Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council. The council has been meeting over the past few months, and state law says the council is required to recommend how the Legislature should spend the funds by Dec. 7 of this year.