The UCSF/JHU Opoid Industry Document Archive just added 317 documents from McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm working with corporations and governments, including with major US opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma as well as Endo Pharmaceutical, Johnson & Johnson and Mallinckrodt.
In February 2021, McKinsey reached a $573 million agreement with attorneys general in 47 states, as well as five US territories and the District of Columbia, resolving matters related to past work for opioid manufacturers, including making documents connected with the litigation public.
These 317 documents from McKinsey’s files and are being publicly released under the terms of that multi-state settlement. They relate to McKinsey’s consulting work for Purdue Pharma, as covered in the New York Times‘ April 22, 2022 story on how McKinsey was working for Purdue at the same time it was working for FDA on related issues.
One of the reporters on this story, Walt Bogdanich (video), was the first reporter to get the original box of “Mr. Butts” the tobacco industry documents from me in 1994.
In November 2021, the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform launched an investigation into McKinsey’s role in the opioid epidemic, particularly into its work advising opioid manufacturers and the FDA simultaneously.
The newly added documents, which are from 2008 to 2018, include scopes of work and proposals, presentations for internal discussion and clients, employee self-evaluations, white papers, calendar meetings, spreadsheets for project staffing, and emails responding to announcements of increased restrictions on opioids. The collection also includes letters from regulatory agencies in response to new drug applications from opioid manufacturers, preparation materials for regulatory advisory committee meetings, opioid-related transition documents for state and federal agencies, and other internal documents.
The Library is currently processing millions of pages of additional documents arising from opioid litigation which will be released in the months to come. Like the tobacco documents, the opioid collection is a state-of-the-art, free digital archive of litigation documents advancing understanding of root causes of the worst drug epidemic in our country’s history so as to prevent future harms.
As part of the UCSF Industry Documents Library, the opioid documents can be cross searched with the tobacco, food, chemical and fossil fuel industry documents collections.
Stanton Glantz blog 