that is, the important thing is directing resources at preventing and treating opioid addictions and ODs, and if there's any justice the entire Sackler family fortune would be used to do so. Fortunately, these two goals are not in conflict, the Sackler's have a net worth upwards of $13 billion, which would be quite helpful resources to direct at preventing and treating opioid addiction and health effects.
> You’re aware America is under siege, fighting an opioid crisis that has exploded into a public-health emergency. You’ve heard of OxyContin, the pain medication to which countless patients have become addicted. But do you know that the company that makes Oxy and reaps the billions of dollars in profits it generates is owned by one family?
From what I can quickly find on the web, I'd estimate that they sold about $35 billion worth of Oxycontin. That doesn't include all of the other opioids they sold through Purdue and other affiliated companies. I'd say it's likely that the vast majority of the Sackler fortune is from Oxycontin.
If you rob a bank you can't just give the money back if you get caught, and you certainly can't just give half of it back.
Additionally, I recommend the book Empire of Pain for an excellent deep dive into the Sackler family and how they essentially created the opioid epidemic. You'll be infuriated as you read it.
Keep your eye on the Sackler/Purdue Pharma case [1].
Purdue steered over $13B directly to the Sackler family by aggressively marketing opiates, misinforming doctors and the public about their dangers, and giving medical software companies kickbacks to push more addictive long-release versions of their opiates to doctors.
One company, Allscripts, was able to pay $145M to resolve criminal and civil kickback allegations [2].
They directly killed over 400,000 people between 1999 and 2017 and indirectly killed many more/caused unimaginable human suffering.
The family is proposing to pay $3B over 7 years and an additional $1.5B by selling off another company they own.
This is the real opiate crisis jackpot and the high-scale, high-powered, industrialized version of the crimes that are happening on the dark web.
I'm sure there are more large companies and high powered individuals involved and agree that the 200 arrests/$6M is an infinitely tiny drop in the bucket, but it's way easier to prove and stick than the larger operations.
I wouldn't call Sackler's the founders of opioids if that's what you're saying. (I can't really tell if that's what you're trying to say?)
But around here, (where I live in opioid infested flyover country), it's pretty well known by people trying to handle the fallout that the Sackler companies produce about 8% of the nation's supply. About 80-82% comes from other corporations. (With about 10% coming from China, but you can never really know how much of the "China" thing is truth as opposed to propaganda these days? So the China part I'm not sure about, it's just what the generally accepted story is.)
Anyway, that's why the cops and emergency services around here are so angry. Because giving the Sacklers a fine and then saying you stopped opioids is a slap in the face to our community and others like it. It's like they actually believe we can't do math. Or that we won't notice that opioid overdoses are still happening.
I think you underestimate the size of the problem.
But again, the Sackler's are only 8% of the problem. So if you go after them, and the owners and stockholders of the companies that provided the other 92% of opioids, and the doctors who wrote the prescriptions in bad faith, you probably come up with an amount of money that could make a dent.
Arguably yes. It's not possible here to properly cover the many issues involved from longstanding narcotics law, international treaties on narcotics, etc. to the duty of care the Sackler family should have exercised for those who consumed its opiate products, and so on. That the Sackler family did this through its company Purdue Pharmaceuticals is immaterial, as they not only knowingly allowed widespread proliferation of these narcotics but also actively encouraged the pushing of said narcotics. Moreover, the Sacklers made many millions of dollars from the hapless and desperate consumers who consumed its addictive opioids—many of whom have died; the estimate of numbers is in excess of 100,000. (If anything, a confiscation of their wealth ought to be justified under proceeds of crime legislation.)
What's truly relevant here is that both the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals not only had both access to expert knowledge about opioids, their addictive properties and the longstanding protocols for their control, administration and use thereof but also they were actually in possession of such expert knowledge.
(Note: this is a non sequitur, as it would NOT have been possible to be a manufacturer of narcotic drugs within the USA and NOT know these facts by second nature and yet they deliberately pushed these drugs onto the market in an extremely irresponsible way (in fact, people within Purdue casually and callously joked about the fact).
The fact that this was allowed to happen and that Purdue was allowed to continue doing so for so long is a separate matter, and for that, the FDA holds considerable responsibility.
Remember, the addictive properties of opioid drugs is extremely well known to the medical fraternity, the pharmaceutical industry and to many, many others and it's been so for a very long time. It's absolutely no secret—in fact, it's been very well documented since the Civil War (when hypodermic needles first became available and opioids were given I.V. to injured soldiers for pain relief many of whom became severely addicted). This knowledge resulted in International treaties in the early part of the 20th Century and it meant that many countries introduced severe penalties for peddling narcotics—from many decades to life in jail, and in some countries the death penalty.
For a company such as Purdue Pharmaceuticals to be little more than a street pusher of narcotics through its negligent misuse of its position of responsibility by not having most stringent protocols in place is about as irresponsible as it gets. As mentioned, upwards of 100,000 people have died as the consequence of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals irresponsible, negligent and reckless actions—actions that were committed out of sheer greed of absolutely the worst kind.
In my opinion, just confiscating their financial assets alone isn't enough, they too ought to be in jail along with the other pushers of narcotics.
That the Sackler family can actually negotiate its way around what's happened is also a travesty of justice.
The Huffington Post article is written by an anti-corporate former heroin addict who, yes, clearly holds animus against those who profited off of opiates.
> By convincing doctors that OxyContin was “safer,” offering financial support and special perks to family physicians who were willing to push the drug, and investing millions in a marketing campaign that claimed OxyContin was not only harmless but beneficial, Purdue Pharma cornered the pain pill market. By 2003, Purdue was selling $1.6 billion of the pill annually.
The crux of his condemnation is the incentivization of doctors to prescribe -- which one could call bribery. Also, the misrepresentation of known addictive and deleterious long term health effects, which I believe could likely be demonstrated through internal company documents.
Wealth allows the purchase of goodwill at a discount price -- the ultimate destination of Mr. Sackler hinges on both the wilfulness and premeditation of his capitalist technique and the breadth and compassion of his philanthropy.
Collecting and displaying Oriental artwork appears to be at the center of his humanism -- the other side of which is biomedical research. I have not scrutinized the publications emerging from the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, but for the sake of his soul and millions of prescription opiate addicts, I hope the papers reveal cures proportionate to his profits.
Did you miss the entire parallel plot in that book about Purdue Pharma lying to pill mill doctors to get pain patients hooked on their "nonaddictive" opioid product? The Sackler family created the demand that those "enterprising" Mexicans fulfilled.
I get the impression America is uniquely vulnerable among the wealthiest nations. Private healthcare providers, a defanged health regulator, and rampant corporate bribery/advertising.
Purdue salespeople lobbied doctors directly to prescribe their opioids to patients, while Purdue suppressed knowledge their incredibly addictive nature, and later offloaded blame to the addicts they largely created.
I thought it was Doctors who pumped the United States full of opiates.
I also thought the demand was a result of political policies that didn’t provide support for communities who were impoverished by the globalization of manufacturing and other industries.
Yes, the Sackler’s profited, and were irredeemably bad actors in this, but they are just one part of the story.
In the article they note that epidemic opioid addiction was correlated with OxyContin prescription volume in a region.
This article isn't about Purdue, it's about the Sackler's that influence Purdue, MundiPhrama, and a number of other global pharmaceutical companies to increase their wealth while also "braiding their name" into high society.
I think you vastly overestimate the attention span of the public on this. If you asked 100 random people on the street who was behind the opioid crisis, I’d be shocked if 10 knew. You also don’t acknowledge how easy it is for the wealthy to hide their money via intermediary organizations and shell companies. It’s not like they absolutely have to donate using the Sackler name.
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