January 31, 2025 • 9 mins
COLORADO JUST GOT ANOTHER OPIOID SETTLEMENT And I've got Attorney General Phil Weiser on to talk about how that money comes in and where it goes. He joins me at 2pm.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm very pleased to have our next guest on the
show too. Oh sorry about that, I got to I'm
messing up my zoom call so we can talk to
our next guest one moment. Please let me do this
because I am a trained professional. Do not try this
at home. Our next guest is the Attorney General of
the State of Colorado, Phil Wiser. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
First of all, it's great to be with you, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
We're here to talk about something that I think is
actually really really great news, and that is the latest
in a long line of opioid settlements from Perdue Pharma.
Because a lot of people may not realize that, I
don't think and you can correct me if I'm wrong here,
I think it's been established beyond a shadow of a
doubt that Purdue Pharma lied about the addictability or addictive
(00:45):
nature of oxy cotton and oxy cootone as they were
promoting it to doctors, and now states like Colorado and
other states around the country are trying to hold them
responsible for their role in what has become a nightmarish
addiction issue, which is now graduate waited to methamphetamine and
fentanyl and all of these other things. But the foundation
of this addiction crisis really was oxy So tell me
(01:08):
a little bit first of all about kind of the
history of these opioid settlements if you could.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'll just take a minute, Mandy and pick up the
story you've just told. In the nineteen nineties later nineteen nineties,
it is exactly as you say. Purdue Pharma, run by
the Sackler family, had a plan to lie to people
and they said, don't worry about these opioids, You'll treat
your pain and you'll never get addicted.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That was a lie.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They need a lot of money by lying to people,
promoting this among the medical establishment, and so many people
for back pain or other issues end up getting hooked.
That was the first wave of this opioid crisis. What
happened then is Cartel saw an opportunity to promote heroin
and that became the second wave.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The third wave. You nailed.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
It is fentinlist synthetic. It's not from the poppy plant.
It's fifty times more potent than heroin is. And all
this crisis has roots in the boardroom at Purdue Pharma.
One of the first things I did, is Attorney General
on this crisis was to sue the Sackler family individually.
And we've been at this and now callousing there around
(02:13):
seventy million from a settlement with Purdue Pharma and the
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. That brings the total
number of settlements to eight hundred and sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And just to give you a sense, the number.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Of companies that followed in the lead of the Sacklers
making decisions about how can we make money and will
worry about the people we harmed Blater includes Mackenzie and
Company who advised Perdue Pharma, includes a PR firm who
advised per Due Pharma, include Johnson and Johnson who also
did this. Includes distributors who shared these dangerous drugs, and
(02:49):
includes those in pharmacies who provided prescriptions in some cases,
and communities more than every.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Person there in terms of opiod So this.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Has been a crisis that has played out over the
last several decades. The amount of harm that's happened to
so many Coloradens who've lost their lives to overdose, families
and communities who've been devastated.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
It is such a tragic story.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And the eight hundred and sixty million is at least
some measure of accountability these companies are have to pay,
and we're now in a position to use.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
This money to address and abate this crisis.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So that's one of the things I was going to
ask you, is do we have these hundreds of millions
of dollars? And if so, one of the things that
I would like to see as a citizen of Colorado.
We all know that there is a huge addiction problem
that is directly correlated with the homelessness issue here in
Denver and the metro area especially. Are we looking at
using this giant pile of money to build facilities to
(03:40):
help people overcome their drug addictionary or maybe even get
inpatient mental health care, because I think that's the foundation
of the issue of homelessness, those two things, addiction and
mental illness often hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What are we spending this money on?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Do we even have it yet?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Many couple of answers that I want to lay out. First.
A lot of these settlements are over a multi year period.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I was comfortable with that because we're not necessarily set
up to spend at all eight once, so having it
come in over years was sensible. Depending on the settlement,
it will come in over a different amount of time.
The longest runway is an eighteen year period. We're now
in year three of that eighteen year period. And what
I also can say number two is every single dollar
(04:27):
that we spend, and I'll get to a minute, how
it's being spent. We've put it up publicly on our website.
So one of the things when I got this challenge
in front of you is I said, a public needs
to know how this money is getting spent. You can
go look at coag dot gov, backslash opioids, and you
can look at the dashboard we created. The next thing
is we did this in a bottom up fashion. I
wanted to make sure the money, as you put it
(04:49):
well with Denver, is spent close to where the harms are,
the San Louise Valley where I learned about this crisis
and how I was having such a devastating effect there.
They now have a new treatment center that they built
with some of this money. You can go online and
see the valley as a region, how much money they've spent.
They've applied for some of the state money, but ninety
percent of this the money is local money spent at
(05:11):
the local and regional level. We set up nineteen regional councils.
Denver is its own region. The sam Louse Valley is
its own region. You can go across the state. Look
at that cog dot gov backslash Opioids and see the
regional map.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The point you also made, I just want to lift
this point up.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
When people are struggling with addiction, it is going to
destroy their lives. When I went to Calder Springs and
we were doing a town hall, someone came and said,
he's here with his son because they lost his wife.
Her mother, who had a master's degree, got addicted first
to pills and then moved to heroin, ended up homeless
and ended up dying of an overdose. And then he
(05:48):
related he lost another one of his sons, also an overdose.
This has been such a cruel crisis that has harmed
so many and I've heard countless numbers of these stories
of parents losing kids, losing parents, losing siblings. It's been devastating,
and we have not had enough treatment, and we need
more treatment for people who are struggling. We're starting to
build more, as you know. As to answer your question
(06:09):
the specifics on Denver, you'd have to go to look
at their regional council.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
How are they spending the money.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Colorado, as you know, is a very local control state,
and we wanted this money to be spent at a
local level.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Who is making up these local councils? I mean, I
think that's maybe I should talk to them about some
of these spending priorities. Because there's two things. Obviously, we
want to stop drug dealers, which would fall more under
your purview as Attorney General, but it would seem to
me that if we can attack the demand side a
little bit as well, then we could use those two
(06:42):
things hand in hand. So, as the AG, what funds
are you using for what to tackle?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
What you can tackle? Thank you, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I want to lift up both your points, demand side
and supply side.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The supply side is a problem.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Fentanyl is keeap to produce the porousness of our border.
Allowing fentanyls to come over from Mexico is a failure
of our national governance. There's fentanyl scanning equipment that was
basically funded in twenty nineteen. It still hasn't been instituted
(07:19):
effectively to better pick up ventanyl coming over the border.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So there's a lot of it We do a lot
of drug interdictions.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You noted, working with the DEA and other partners to
take down cartels and other rings who are pushing these
dangerous drugs. We're also pushing legislation around social media companies
who've made it too easy.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
To order fentanyl online.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
For teenagers who are skilled, they can find fentanyl online
is easy, they can order pizza. It's a real problems,
so we have to work to make it harder to
get access to Your point's also right, how do we
help people recover? And one thing that we've done, this
is an important point to answer your question, is to
ensure we're providing medication addiction treatment or people when they
(08:00):
go to jail or they go to prison, all often
they're there because they start with addiction, they commit crimes,
they end up in jail prison. Are they going to
get well so they're stopping using and they're instead living
in recovery well? That depends are they getting treatment. We've
made a real priority for the money that we have
at the state level, which is ten percent of the total,
(08:21):
to fund medication addiction treatment, whether it's in jail or prisons.
I've also met parents who've lost kids who went to
jail and said I want treatment and we're told you
don't have any and then they leave and they overdose
because their bodies change, they can't take the same dose before.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
We're fixing that in Colorado, and our money's helping.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Attorney General Phil Wiser, I am out of time, but
I will say this. This is one of those things
that cuts across every socioeconomic barrier, every ethnic barrier, everything.
This problem affects so many people in Colorado, and for me,
it seems like this should be like basically a state
(09:00):
urgency until we can figure out how to do what
we can do. Some people you're never going to be
able to help or fix, they don't want to be
helped or fixed. But the people that we can, i'd
like to see those investments in that. I look forward
to seeing how some of this money is spent as
it continues to come in. I appreciate your time today,
Attorney General Phil Wiser. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was great.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
We'll come back and talk more about in the future,
all right, Thank you, sir.
I'm very pleased to have our next guest on the
show too. Oh sorry about that, I got to I'm
messing up my zoom call so we can talk to
our next guest one moment. Please let me do this
because I am a trained professional. Do not try this
at home. Our next guest is the Attorney General of
the State of Colorado, Phil Wiser. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
First of all, it's great to be with you, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
We're here to talk about something that I think is
actually really really great news, and that is the latest
in a long line of opioid settlements from Perdue Pharma.
Because a lot of people may not realize that, I
don't think and you can correct me if I'm wrong here,
I think it's been established beyond a shadow of a
doubt that Purdue Pharma lied about the addictability or addictive
(00:45):
nature of oxy cotton and oxy cootone as they were
promoting it to doctors, and now states like Colorado and
other states around the country are trying to hold them
responsible for their role in what has become a nightmarish
addiction issue, which is now graduate waited to methamphetamine and
fentanyl and all of these other things. But the foundation
of this addiction crisis really was oxy So tell me
(01:08):
a little bit first of all about kind of the
history of these opioid settlements if you could.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'll just take a minute, Mandy and pick up the
story you've just told. In the nineteen nineties later nineteen nineties,
it is exactly as you say. Purdue Pharma, run by
the Sackler family, had a plan to lie to people
and they said, don't worry about these opioids, You'll treat
your pain and you'll never get addicted.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That was a lie.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They need a lot of money by lying to people,
promoting this among the medical establishment, and so many people
for back pain or other issues end up getting hooked.
That was the first wave of this opioid crisis. What
happened then is Cartel saw an opportunity to promote heroin
and that became the second wave.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The third wave. You nailed.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
It is fentinlist synthetic. It's not from the poppy plant.
It's fifty times more potent than heroin is. And all
this crisis has roots in the boardroom at Purdue Pharma.
One of the first things I did, is Attorney General
on this crisis was to sue the Sackler family individually.
And we've been at this and now callousing there around
(02:13):
seventy million from a settlement with Purdue Pharma and the
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. That brings the total
number of settlements to eight hundred and sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And just to give you a sense, the number.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Of companies that followed in the lead of the Sacklers
making decisions about how can we make money and will
worry about the people we harmed Blater includes Mackenzie and
Company who advised Perdue Pharma, includes a PR firm who
advised per Due Pharma, include Johnson and Johnson who also
did this. Includes distributors who shared these dangerous drugs, and
(02:49):
includes those in pharmacies who provided prescriptions in some cases,
and communities more than every.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Person there in terms of opiod So this.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Has been a crisis that has played out over the
last several decades. The amount of harm that's happened to
so many Coloradens who've lost their lives to overdose, families
and communities who've been devastated.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
It is such a tragic story.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And the eight hundred and sixty million is at least
some measure of accountability these companies are have to pay,
and we're now in a position to use.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
This money to address and abate this crisis.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So that's one of the things I was going to
ask you, is do we have these hundreds of millions
of dollars? And if so, one of the things that
I would like to see as a citizen of Colorado.
We all know that there is a huge addiction problem
that is directly correlated with the homelessness issue here in
Denver and the metro area especially. Are we looking at
using this giant pile of money to build facilities to
(03:40):
help people overcome their drug addictionary or maybe even get
inpatient mental health care, because I think that's the foundation
of the issue of homelessness, those two things, addiction and
mental illness often hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What are we spending this money on?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Do we even have it yet?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Many couple of answers that I want to lay out. First.
A lot of these settlements are over a multi year period.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I was comfortable with that because we're not necessarily set
up to spend at all eight once, so having it
come in over years was sensible. Depending on the settlement,
it will come in over a different amount of time.
The longest runway is an eighteen year period. We're now
in year three of that eighteen year period. And what
I also can say number two is every single dollar
(04:27):
that we spend, and I'll get to a minute, how
it's being spent. We've put it up publicly on our website.
So one of the things when I got this challenge
in front of you is I said, a public needs
to know how this money is getting spent. You can
go look at coag dot gov, backslash opioids, and you
can look at the dashboard we created. The next thing
is we did this in a bottom up fashion. I
wanted to make sure the money, as you put it
(04:49):
well with Denver, is spent close to where the harms are,
the San Louise Valley where I learned about this crisis
and how I was having such a devastating effect there.
They now have a new treatment center that they built
with some of this money. You can go online and
see the valley as a region, how much money they've spent.
They've applied for some of the state money, but ninety
percent of this the money is local money spent at
(05:11):
the local and regional level. We set up nineteen regional councils.
Denver is its own region. The sam Louse Valley is
its own region. You can go across the state. Look
at that cog dot gov backslash Opioids and see the
regional map.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The point you also made, I just want to lift
this point up.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
When people are struggling with addiction, it is going to
destroy their lives. When I went to Calder Springs and
we were doing a town hall, someone came and said,
he's here with his son because they lost his wife.
Her mother, who had a master's degree, got addicted first
to pills and then moved to heroin, ended up homeless
and ended up dying of an overdose. And then he
(05:48):
related he lost another one of his sons, also an overdose.
This has been such a cruel crisis that has harmed
so many and I've heard countless numbers of these stories
of parents losing kids, losing parents, losing siblings. It's been devastating,
and we have not had enough treatment, and we need
more treatment for people who are struggling. We're starting to
build more, as you know. As to answer your question
(06:09):
the specifics on Denver, you'd have to go to look
at their regional council.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
How are they spending the money.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Colorado, as you know, is a very local control state,
and we wanted this money to be spent at a
local level.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Who is making up these local councils? I mean, I
think that's maybe I should talk to them about some
of these spending priorities. Because there's two things. Obviously, we
want to stop drug dealers, which would fall more under
your purview as Attorney General, but it would seem to
me that if we can attack the demand side a
little bit as well, then we could use those two
(06:42):
things hand in hand. So, as the AG, what funds
are you using for what to tackle?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
What you can tackle? Thank you, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I want to lift up both your points, demand side
and supply side.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The supply side is a problem.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Fentanyl is keeap to produce the porousness of our border.
Allowing fentanyls to come over from Mexico is a failure
of our national governance. There's fentanyl scanning equipment that was
basically funded in twenty nineteen. It still hasn't been instituted
(07:19):
effectively to better pick up ventanyl coming over the border.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So there's a lot of it We do a lot
of drug interdictions.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You noted, working with the DEA and other partners to
take down cartels and other rings who are pushing these
dangerous drugs. We're also pushing legislation around social media companies
who've made it too easy.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
To order fentanyl online.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
For teenagers who are skilled, they can find fentanyl online
is easy, they can order pizza. It's a real problems,
so we have to work to make it harder to
get access to Your point's also right, how do we
help people recover? And one thing that we've done, this
is an important point to answer your question, is to
ensure we're providing medication addiction treatment or people when they
(08:00):
go to jail or they go to prison, all often
they're there because they start with addiction, they commit crimes,
they end up in jail prison. Are they going to
get well so they're stopping using and they're instead living
in recovery well? That depends are they getting treatment. We've
made a real priority for the money that we have
at the state level, which is ten percent of the total,
(08:21):
to fund medication addiction treatment, whether it's in jail or prisons.
I've also met parents who've lost kids who went to
jail and said I want treatment and we're told you
don't have any and then they leave and they overdose
because their bodies change, they can't take the same dose before.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
We're fixing that in Colorado, and our money's helping.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Attorney General Phil Wiser, I am out of time, but
I will say this. This is one of those things
that cuts across every socioeconomic barrier, every ethnic barrier, everything.
This problem affects so many people in Colorado, and for me,
it seems like this should be like basically a state
(09:00):
urgency until we can figure out how to do what
we can do. Some people you're never going to be
able to help or fix, they don't want to be
helped or fixed. But the people that we can, i'd
like to see those investments in that. I look forward
to seeing how some of this money is spent as
it continues to come in. I appreciate your time today,
Attorney General Phil Wiser. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was great.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
We'll come back and talk more about in the future,
all right, Thank you, sir.
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