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Publicis Health has agreed to a $350 million settlement for its role in developing marketing strategies for opioids, marking a first in the advertising industry’s involvement in the US opioid crisis. This settlement, announced by attorneys general, will be distributed across all states to support opioid recovery and prevention programs.
Publicis Health, a subsidiary of the French media giant Publicis Groupe, has committed to paying this amount within two months, which includes $7 million allocated for states’ legal fees.
The agreement also entails a ban against Publicis from engaging in future marketing or sales of opioids and mandates the disclosure of internal documents related to its opioid promotion efforts. Publicis’s collaboration with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, from 2010 to 2019, was highlighted in a court filing, showcasing the company’s significant role in opioid marketing strategies that promoted opioids as safe and non-abusable.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who co-led the settlement negotiations, emphasized Publicis’s development of misleading advertisements and sales tactics that contributed to the opioid epidemic. These strategies included targeting high-prescribing doctors with promotional materials that misrepresented the safety and abuse potential of OxyContin. The settlement follows a trend of legal actions against companies involved in the opioid crisis, including a nearly $1 billion settlement from consulting firm McKinsey & Co. for its role.
Publicis’s response to the settlement stated that it is not an admission of wrongdoing but acknowledged the need for collaboration across sectors to combat the opioid crisis. The company argued that the implicated marketing activities, primarily conducted by its then-subsidiary Rosetta, were lawful.
