Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $572 million toward ending the opioid epidemic in Oklahoma, the first time a judge has found a pharmaceutical company responsible for the spike in addiction and overdoses caused by its drugs.

Judge Thad Balkman announced his ruling on Monday after an eight-week trial, the first of more than a thousand lawsuits against opioid makers filed around the US. Balkman said the evidence presented showed the company's misleading marketing and promotion of opioids caused high rates of addiction and overdoses, and he ordered the company to pay for prevention, treatment, and recovery services.

"The opioid crisis is an imminent danger and menace to Oklahomans," he said in court on Monday.

The Oklahoma lawsuit originally named several other companies, including Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Before the trial began, Purdue agreed to pay $270 million toward addiction research and legal fees, but the company did not admit responsibility for the opioid epidemic in its settlement.

When he filed the lawsuit in 2017, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said pharmaceutical companies had tricked people into believing prescription opioids were safe. Hunter alleged that internal documents and other evidence proved that the companies knew how dangerously addictive the drugs were, yet they engaged in aggressive marketing tactics to profit from more people using opioids.

“These companies have waged a fraudulent, decade-long marketing campaign to profit from the anguish of thousands of Oklahomans,” Hunter said in a statement at the time. “These companies have made in excess of $10 billion a year, while our friends, family members, neighbors and loved ones have become addicts, gone to prison or died because of the opioid epidemic."



In 2015 alone, more than 326 million opioid pills were dispensed to Oklahomans — 110 pills for each state resident, the lawsuit noted. The state was also saw the most fentanyl prescriptions per capita.