After a Baltimore City lawsuit initially sought $5 billion in restitution from pharmaceutical companies McKesson and Cencora, a judge rejected a jury’s proposed $266 million award to the city and offered a fraction of the amount, according to court documents.

In 2024 Baltimore sued McKesson and Cencora, previously known as AmerisourceBergen, for fueling the opioid epidemic in the city by shipping what it said were unreasonable amounts of prescription opioids to the area. The two companies accounted for 60% of the prescription opioid market in Baltimore, city lawyers said. McKesson and Cencora sent 320 million oxycodone pills within the city from 2006 to 2019, according to the lawsuit.

A jury found in November that the pharmaceutical companies shipped too many painkillers into Baltimore

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