Purdue Pharma, We Will See You In Hell!

A bankruptcy judge says he will make it official: Purdue Pharma — in business in some form since 1892 and wholly owned by members of the Sackler family since 1952 — shall soon be no more, dissolved, and it and its soon-to-be-former owners the family shall pay some $7 billion over 15 years for their aggressive role in getting America dopesick pushing OxyContin with lies.

Your reminder, the evil narco-cartel getting Americans like JD Vance’s momma addicted to pain pills are not Venezuelans bringing over fentanyl in drug boats! Your pushermen, pusherwomen, and pusherpeople are right here in the US of A, in white coats, suits and ties. An estimated 13.8 million Americans abuse prescription drugs every year, and fill 125 million opioid prescriptions, versus about 660,000 people a year estimated to use heroin. And one often leads to the other, especially where people lack access to medical and mental health care, and heroin is cheaper and easier to get.

And about 80 percent of the drugs intercepted at the border are being smuggled by Americans.

Remember how when Vance was a boy, his momma got addicted to prescription drugs from the ones she stole from her job as a nurse? From a New York Times profile of her (gift link):

[Beverly] Aikins’s struggle with addiction began many years ago one day at work. She was a nurse. She got a bad headache and took a Vicodin pill [made by Abbott Labs of Chicago, Illinois]. She loved the way it made her feel. She went home, bathed her children and cleaned her house. Soon she began to purloin stronger pharmaceuticals, such as Percocet [made by Endo Labs of Malvern, PA]. She lost her job and her nursing license and, with it, her access to prescription pills. She began to snort heroin.

And then, in 1996, Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin came on the scene, billing itself as a safer, less addictive alternative, even though no long-term studies and no assessment of its addictive capabilities had been conducted. Nevertheless, the company touted lied that OxyContin “might be less likely to cause abuse and addiction than shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin” and claimed that the risk of addiction to the painkiller was less than 1 percent, and took Percocet and Vicodin’s whole market of hurters. It was a blockbuster, making $2.8 billion in 2001, and by 2017 it had made the company $35 billion and the Sacklers among the 20 richest families in the world.

But then came the deaths. Between 1999 and 2017, 200,000 deaths had occurred from overdoses of OxyContin and other prescription opioids, and by 2022, 145 people a day in the US were dying of overdoses.

The alarm bells rang early: In 2001, Connecticut’s then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a statement urging Purdue to do something about OxyContin abuse, and the company first began to be investigated by the DOJ in 2002. And in 2004 (more than 20 years ago!), West Virginia sued.

In 2007, the company pleaded guilty to felony criminal misbranding for their lies that OxyContin tastes great and is less addicting, and the company’s president Michael Friedman, top lawyer, and former chief medical officer pleaded guilty as individuals. But did the company fix the error of its ways? It did not! In 2020 the company pleaded guilty to three felonies, related to mislabeling and illegal kickbacks, activities that they not only failed to quit but crushed, snorted, and turbocharged after the 2007 pleas, wooing prescribers with luxury vacations and perks, and funding grants to advocate for more aggressive treatment of pain. With opioids, of course!

And then a tsunami of lawsuits, Piper! And a class-action! Which Purdue Pharma has fought tooth and nail for the past two decades, all the way to the Supreme Court. While at the same time, say plaintiffs, the Sacklers began a “milking program,” taking $11 billion — about 75 percent of Purdue’s total assets — out of the company over the next decade. Then in 2019, the then-drained Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the Sacklers proposed to generously return approximately $4.3 billion to Purdue’s bankruptcy estate in exchange for the family being released from all future opioid-related claims, and enjoining any victims from bringing such claims against them in the future.

Supreme Court: This Place Could Use More Fraud And Pollution!

A bankruptcy court approved that, but the Second Circuit was like, Bankruptcy Court doesn’t have the power to let some non-party to the bankruptcy off the hook, and the Supreme Court agreed. So back the case went, to Judge Sean H. Lane of the US Bankruptcy Court for the SDNY, and now cometh the largest pharmaceutical settlement in history. One that holds those sleazy Sacklers personally responsible, requiring them to relinquish ownership and pay up to $7 billion out of their personal fortunes, and the company to pay $900 million. Then Purdue will be dissolved and reborn as a public benefit company called Knoa Pharma, making small amounts of opioid painkillers and also opioid overdose-reversal medications, with profits to go to addiction remediation-type programs.

Still, the gross amount for each claim is expected to range from $7,000 to $16,000, which is hardly the value of a life lost.

And the Sackler family has destroyed their once-classy name. With help from the artist Nan Goldin! She pushed to have their name stripped from the Met, the Tate, the Louvre and the Guggenheim, as documented in the fantastic documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

So, goodbye Sacklers. Off back under your rock you go, billions poorer (but surely still in the 1 percent).

And stay away from the opiates and opioids, kids.

Don’t wind up like Bobby Kennedy Jr.!

[New Yorker archive link / New York Times archive link / The Guardian]

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