I don't think there is going to be the same level of liability. In the tobacco case, people who started smoking Marlboros were dying from smoking Marlboros. Wit

I don't think there is going to be the same level of liability. In the tobacco case, people who started smoking Marlboros were dying from smoking Marlboros. With OxyContin, this isn't the case. E.g.: - User switches to heroin or some other generic opiate because it's too hard to get a legal prescription and dies. - User mixes drug with alcohol or benzodiazepines and dies. - User dies from APAP poisoning, which the government requires to be added. There might be 50,000 opiate-related deaths per year or whatever, but the actual number of accidental opiate ODs on solely OxyContin is no more than the number of deaths from Tylenol or Ibuprofen. The Supreme Court already ruled that drug manufacturers can't be held responsible for the safety of generics. So even if Purdue is held entirely responsible for the rise in opiate addiction, there are enough mitigating factors in terms of the actual harms of addiction that I think it will be hard to see a tobacco-style settlement.