Walmart agreed Tuesday to a $3.1 billion settlement over lawsuits that tie the retail giant to the longstanding opioid crisis in the US. earlier this month, CVS and Walgreens announced “agreements in principle,” which are expected to result in $10 billion settlements.

The money will resolve “all opioid lawsuits and potential lawsuits by state, local, and tribal governments, if conditions are satisfied,” Walmart said in a statement. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the money will help pay for addiction treatment and drug education programs in the US.

The opioid crisis has ravaged the US over the past decade and contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths from drug overdoses. About 75% of the nearly 92,000 deaths in 2020 from drug overdoses involving an opioid. Fentanyl, a drug that’s often laced into heroin and cocaine, is a major contributor.

The health care industry, as well as pharmacies like Walmart, Walgreens and CVS, have come under intense scrutiny for the over-prescription of opioids, which led to addictions in people who initially took them for medical reasons. the invention of the pain medication OxyContinin particular, was a catalyst in the opioid epidemic.

The US Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency over the opioid crisis in 2017.

In Walmart’s statement on the settlement, the company said that it “strongly disputes the allegations in these matters, and this settlement framework does not include any admission of liability.” Walmart added that it remains committed to providing customers with

The venture capital industry doesn’t have the best track record when you’re talking about ethics.

Like most professions involving power and wealth, venture capital also sometimes attracts people for whom doing the right thing isn’t a concern. Limited regulatory oversight and a lack of transparency mean that investors can often get off scot-free for not factoring ethics into their investment philosophy.

We’ve all seen startups happily taking money from investors who back companies that have a negative impact on the climate or broadcast misogynistic rhetoric. Sometimes, we also get venture firms raising capital from foreign governments that don’t have the best track records surrounding issues like human rights.

But not every investor is a bad person, of course, and it seems as though the industry is taking steps to clean up its act — albeit slowly. Startups and investors are paying attention to what kind of people they want to work with and where they want their money to come from. Investors are also looking for startups that won’t just make them money but have the potential to leave society and the planet in a better place.

To find out just how ethical venture capital is at the moment and how far it can still go, TechCrunch surveyed six investors about how they approach ethics in their day-to-day. We’re happy to report that all of them said the industry doesn’t do enough to police itself on issues surrounding ethics. They also wanted more to be done to make the industry