Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, who represents plaintiffs in the MDL, said that at this point in the epidemic — which caused average U.S. life expectancy to drop in 2015 and 2016, according to federal researchers — no company will want to be the one that keeps marketing opioids directly to physicians.

“I think we’re entering a new phase, and hopefully we’re rolling the clock back to 20-some years ago, when doctors thought twice about ever using an opioid,” Shkolnik said.

Purdue’s move to reduce budgets and shift advertising priorities does raise questions of timing, attorneys said, noting the company resolved a criminal case with the U.S. Department of Justice a decade ago for $600 million over its marketing of OxyContin. “It’s a positive, good step, but it’s just a little too late,” Shkolnik said. “You would have thought $600 million in fines, indictments, would have stopped this 10 years ago, but it didn’t.”   Download