Kroger has reached a $1.2 billion national settlement for communities affected by its opioid sales, with an additional $36 million for Native American tribes.

The company’s public shares dropped on Friday after the grocery store giant's second-quarter earnings report. The agreement will result in a $1.4 billion charge to its second-quarter earnings, a tally that equates to around $1.54 per share. Similar economic consequences have affected various pharmaceutical retailers, such as Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, and Rite Aid.

The grocery chain Kroger said on Friday it had agreed to pay about $1.2 billion to states, local governments and Native American tribes to settle claims that its retail pharmacies played a role in fueling the opioid crisis.

Kroger, which was accused of improperly monitoring prescriptions of highly addictive painkillers filled in its store pharmacies, said it would pay the settlement over 11 years, beginning in December. The company said that legal fees, which will be paid over six years, would add $177 million to the total.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott has floated a plan he says will reduce the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.: reinstating the COVID-19 era public health policy known as Title 42.

Title 42, enacted by the Trump administration in March 2020 and lifted May 11, was used to curb the spread of COVID-19. It gave border officials the power to quickly expel people arriving at the southern border, essentially blocking their ability to apply for asylum. 

One of the biggest winners of the 2020 elections, across red and blue states alike, was drug decriminalization. With even many conservatives getting on board with decriminalization, it seemed as though the “war on drugs” might soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. The most sweeping of the 2020 initiatives was Oregon’s Measure 110, which decriminalized personal possession of all drugs. The leading precedent for the ambitious law was Portugal’s similar policy passed twenty years earlier.

Drug decriminalization, for just a moment last month, appeared to have been making itself at home in the American Northwest—raising questions once again as to what the country might look like were it to permit possession.

A temporary law in Washington state that had made drugs illegal was due to expire on July 1, in effect making possessing any drug no longer a crime. Lawmakers only approved a new drug policy about six weeks before the deadline.

How soon is too soon to call a progressive and libertarian policy obsession a public policy fiasco? In the case of Oregon’s Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, better known as Measure 110, the moment can’t come soon enough.

The Supreme Court blocked Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion settlement of opioid lawsuits against its Sackler family owners, agreeing to hear the Justice Department’s claim that the drugmaker’s bankruptcy plan improperly wipes out potential liability to additional parties for allegedly fueling the opioid addiction crisis.

The Supreme Court put OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement on hold Thursday in an order siding with the Biden administration’s request to reexamine provisions shielding the Sackler family from liability.

The single-page order does not contain a breakdown of the nine justices’ votes; it directs the parties to present their arguments before the high court in December.

The billionaire family that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, will receive immunity from all current and future civil claims over the company’s role in the opioid crisis as part of a deal approved by a federal appeals court on Tuesday.

In a landmark ruling Tuesday, a federal appeals court in New York cleared the way for a bankruptcy deal for opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma.

The deal will shield members of the Sackler family, who own the company, from future lawsuits.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals spent more than a year reviewing the case after a lower court ruled it was improper for Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy deal to block future lawsuits against the Sackler family.

The Sacklers earned billions of dollars from the sale of OxyContin and other opioids.