millions of americans addicted to a potentially deadly narcotic as part of its business plan. purdue and the sacklers dispute that. but in 2020, prosecutors said, quote, purdue admitted that it marketed and sold its dangerous opioid products to health care providers even though it had reason to believe those providers were diverting them to abusers, unquote. and, quote, the company lied to the drug enforcement administration about steps it had taken to prevent such diversion fraud lendly increasing the amount of its products it was permitted to sell. purdue also paid kickbacks to providers to encourage them to prescribe even more of its products, end quote. now a federal judge has approved a bankruptcy settlement between the sacklers, purdue pharma and a group of eight states and washington, d.c. under the deal the sacklers must pay out as much as $6 billion for opioid abatement programs, overdose rescue medicines to the states and to compensate victims. between 1999 and 2020 the u.s.