Mississippi is one step closer to receiving nearly $41 million from the prescription pain manufacturing company Purdue Pharma after a federal bankruptcy judge in New York said he will approve a plan to recoup billions of dollars from the Sackler family for its role in contributing to hundreds of thousands of American overdose deaths.

Purdue developed and patented the drug OxyContin in 1996. The prescription painkiller is an opioid, a class of drugs that can relieve pain but can also be highly addictive and debilitating. For years, company officials and the Sacklers, the family that owned the company, downplayed the risk of OxyContin, even as evidence mounted that its frequent prescriptions were leading to more overdose deaths across the country.

Although physicians prescribed fewer bottl

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