The fines will be distributed to state and federal law enforcement agencies, the federal government, federal and state Medicaid programs, a Virginia prescription monitoring program and individuals who had sued the company. About $5 million will go toward a six-year company program to monitor compliance with the agreement.

When he took office in 2001, Brownlee said, his office was handling a number of cases related to OxyContin abuse, including crimes by addicts seeking to support their habits and arrests of street dealers and even pharmacists and physicians.

"But it always seemed, I think to me and to the investigators, that there was more," he told a news conference.

Investigators from a number of state and federal agencies worked together on an investigation of Purdue Pharma and began to subpoena company records in 2002, Brownlee said.

"From these millions of records, they picked out probably 300 to 500 documents and pieced together a case," he said.

The Food and Drug Administration was part of the investigation. A spokesman for Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the agency had not acted on a citizen petition Blumenthal's office filed more than three years ago. The petition raised concerns about misbranding and called for stronger warnings and fuller disclosure about OxyContin's dangers.

Kim Rice of the FDA told the news conference that over time the agency has mandated increasingly stronger warnings on labels about OxyContin's abuse potential.

Purdue Pharma recruited high-profile help in 2002 as the nation's number of oxycodone-related deaths rose dramatically. It hired former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's firm, Giuliani Partners, to try to prevent smuggling and abuse of the drug.

"Purdue has demonstrated its commitment to fighting this problem in launching practical and novel solutions including the provision of tamper-resistant prescription pads to over 10,000 physicians and implementing its highly acclaimed `Painfully Obvious' teen education program," Giuliani said at the time.

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