Baltimore City has reached a $45 million settlement with CVS over its role in the opioid epidemic, marking the second successful lawsuit of its kind this year.
The settlement, announced in a Friday afternoon news release, came less than two months after the city reached a separate $45 million settlement with the pharmaceutical giant Allergan. It has already received the money from the June settlement, and it will secure the full amount from the CVS settlement by the end of the year.
“These companies targeted Baltimore and decided profits were more important than the health and safety of the people of this City," Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement. "We are fully committed to ensuring that these companies pay their fair share to repair the damage they’ve done to our neighborhoods and families. We have said from the start that we will not sell the people of Baltimore short and will do everything in our power to obtain the resources we need to meaningfully address this epidemic.”
With $90 million received from settlements this year, the city has already amassed about the same amount of money as it would have if it were to have joined state settlements in recent years, according to the news release.
It's unclear how much of the $45 million will go to the city's legal fees. When the city settled with Allergan, nearly half – $20 million in total – was used to pay lawyers representing the city.
The amount of money the city pursued was based on how many opioids the companies distributed in Baltimore. CVS accounted for about 0.5% of the total share between 2006 and 2014, which was similar to Allergan.
The city now hopes to recover a significantly larger sum of money from a lawsuit against companies that comprised more than 80% of the total share of distributed opioids.
Those named in the litigation include Johnson & Johnson; McKesson; Cardinal Health; Cencora, formerly called AmerisourceBergen; Teva Pharmaceuticals; Walgreens; and former Insys Therapeutics owner John Kapoor.
That lawsuit, in which the city is seeking nearly $12 billion, is scheduled to go to trial on Sept. 16, but the companies are attempting to have it thrown out, The Baltimore Sun has reported.
“We have built an overwhelming case against the opioid companies, and we will continue to move litigation forward to trial against any defendant that is unwilling to recognize their own role in driving this crisis and the significant resources this City needs to combat the consequences of their decisions,” said City Solicitor Ebony Thompson in a statement.
The city's announcements touting opioid-related settlements have provided some of the only public comments from the mayor's administration about the deadly overdose crisis in recent months.
Top officials have remained largely silent about the fentanyl-driven crisis and have canceled public hearings scheduled by city council members, citing a need to protect sensitive information related to ongoing litigation.
The lawsuits, they have said, provide an unprecedented opportunity for the city to address the crisis at a time when Baltimore has the highest overdose rate in the nation.
So far, the city has committed $5 million in settlement funds for its Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, $5 million for Healing City Baltimore, $1 million for Roberta’s House and $1 million for From Prison Cells to PhD.
Sara Whaley, program manager of the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative at Johns Hopkins and faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, will help officials decide where to allocate future funds, according to the Friday news release.
Local officials' sanguine responses to the settlements come as overdose deaths in Maryland dipped in 2023 as a part of a nationwide decline for the first time in five years – but Baltimore's annual death toll continued to climb.
While the state saw 2,513 deaths in 2023, a 2.5% decrease from the year prior, Baltimore had 1,045 deaths, an increase of 5.7%, according to the Maryland Department of Health.
More recent data, however, may show some hope.
With 360 overdose deaths in Baltimore as of June, the city is on track to have fewer than 900 deaths by the end of the year – a number that would mark a notable drop but would require the death rate to remain steady despite an expected increase in fatalities during winter months.
In addition, the city saw 896 overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in June, a significant decrease from previous periods.
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