american tribes, and other groups who accuse the companies of starting and sustaining the crisis that led to the deaths of more than 400,000 americans. the potential settlement could reach up to $50 billion in cash, drug treatment medications, and it would avoid a trial described as quote the most complex litigation ever. the u.s. government estimates that opioid addiction has cost more than $504 billion when you add up healthcare, criminal justice, and lost productivity cost. nbc s ann thompson is here with more. do we know anything? does it look like there will be a settlement? so the reasonchris, is because there is a trial. the first federal trial involving the opioid crisis that s supposed to start on monday. it involves two counties you know well in the state of ohio. cuyahoga and summit. and they say that the the distributors of opioids and the makers of opioids conspired to
obviously is a gigantic amount of money. it s obviously an order of magnitude larger than the settlement that was just ordered for johnson & johnson yesterday, but in terms of the gigantic numbers here, the size of this catastrophe, the estimated cost to the united states of what purdue pharma has done in terms of its role in the crisis, how do those numbers stack up? well, what s interesting is in 2017 the white house council of economic advisers came out with a cost, a dollar amount for the opioid crisis and they said it was $504 billion. that was the cost to the united states. so you have to keep this offer from purdue pharma in that context. and the other bit of information is that purdue pharma made $35 billion from the sale of oxycontin. so they re offering less than a third of what they or roughly a third of what they made on that one drug as their payment to make all their legal liability go away? yes.
of economic advisers came out with a cost, a dollar amount for the opioid crisis and they said it was $504 billion. that was the cost to the united states. so you have to keep this offer from purdue pharma in that context. purdue pharma made $35 billion from the sale of oxycontin. so they re offering roughly a third of what they made on that one drug as their payment to make all of their legal liability go away? yes. and i, you know, i caution that this is a this is just the proposal that s on the table right now. laura strickler, investigative journalist at nbcnews.com. thank you for breaking this story for us. thank you. thanks. we ll be right back. we ll be right back. you should be mad at forced camaraderie. and you should be mad at tech that makes things worse. but you re not mad,
economic advisers estimates the opioid crisis s cost hid $504 billion in 2015. that takes into account a lot of costs you have to take into account including hospital workers, first responders, criminal justice officials, ambulance runs, productivity, help for parents of children or in this case children of parents who overdosed. joining me is laura strickler who has the latest on the story. tell us about this deal. at first blush that seems like a very, very big offer, 10 to 12 billion dollars, but when you start working through the math and those numbers that the c.e.a. came out with, the opioid crisis is a lot more expensive than this. and something to keep in mind is the company purdue pharma over the years has earned $35 billion from the sale of oxycontin. you put that into perspective in terms of this 10 to 12
with a b dollars two i say $504 billion. either one is not acceptable. we are doing that and is working out really well. i just came on stage and i was told that kim jong un said some terrific things about me. he said i have faith in president trump. think of this. you don t hear that. [applause] and just moments ago they put os that he said very strongly thatn we want to denuclearize north korea during president trump s tenure. that is the nicest it just said it, just set it. in the meantime, even if he didn t, even if he didn t, s we have our hostages back. there has been no more missile testing. there has been no more rockets flying over japan. there has been no more nuclear testing. and we have a good feeling. he likes me, i like him, who