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Sacklers–who made $11B off opioid crisis–to pay $225M in damages
- ineedasername 6y agoIn their defense, they really wanted make a ton of money, really didn't want to pay a huge fine. So, you know, it all kind of worked out. For them.
- tartoran 6y agoYou’re being sarcastic, in their defense, right?
- zalkota 6y agoHey, they didn’t force the pill don’t anyone’s mouth!
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoI believe they're using "the American dream" as the defense. So, yes, it's sarcastic, but maybe not in the way you were thinking.
- ineedasername 6y agoI'm not sure I was sarcastic so much as I was bitterly cynical.
- ars 6y agoWhat happened to all that money they made? I find it hard to believe they can spend that much money.
- freeone3000 6y agoNo no, they still have the money, they just didn't want to pay a big fine so they paid a small one instead.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoIt's "The War on Drugs Sold by Outsiders", commonly shortened to "The War on Drugs". Any confusion is intentional.
- ineedasername 6y agoWait, what about plowing all of the money back into research? Are you saying that's a less than honest diversion from the issue of their extortionate prices?
- ryder9 6y agooffshore bank accounts and tax avoidance schemes
- cwwc 6y agoThese cases are damn hard to win. Surprised they even got more than 100 million. But the legal bill... easily hundreds of million.
- jimbob45 6y agoThey also have to relinquish control of the company. That’s arguably the main force of the punishment.
- triceratops 6y agoWas their stake in the company seized? Or did they have to sell? The latter isn't much of a punishment.
- randmeerkat 6y agoSo they have to give up control of their company and they still have billions in profits..? How is that a punishment? Meanwhile the person that robbed a gas station is rotting in jail... If only they were billionaires, if they robbed millions at scale they’d only have to transfer ownership of their LLC.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThe Sacklers engaged in unethical behavior to get people hooked on something that made them money. Easy opioid prescriptions created thousands of (mostly) functional addicts who were getting their fix in a high-quality control form via their doctor on a monthly basis. That's bad but that's not an opioid "crisis". You don't get a crisis because of a few evil billionaires. More things have to go wrong. What really turned the opioid problem into a crisis is when the feds cracked down. The doctors had to cut the junkies off or lose their licenses. The junkies predictably switched to the street for their supply with predictably tragic results. The Sacklers may have done unethical, arguably evil, things to make a buck but there's plenty of blame that should be cast in the direction of other parties here.
- sbelskie 6y agoI’d challenge this timeline. The crisis was widely announced and understood before the crackdowns you mention. I don’t at all deny the negative effects that came from crackdowns. As you say they shifted a prescription drug crisis to one that more and more is a heroin and fentanyl crisis, but the crisis existed before, at least in the popular imagination and discourse.
- rubyfan 6y agoSo since the market created functional drug addicts that’s ok and the government caused the problem by trying to stop the market from creating drug addiction?
- nine_k 6y agoIf somebody tried to stop a train that was speeding along a wrong way by putting a wall on its way, it would end in a trainwreck. If you care about the passengers, that won't be a responsible thing to do, though technically the train would be stopped. So, a trainwreck is what we see :(
- rubyfan 6y agoGenuinely curious the alternative you would suggest. I think people can still access opioids legally, albeit much less easy than before. There are plenty of treatment options and the right answer isn’t to let drug addicts keep on ruining their own lives and the people around them. The train has to slow down and people have to get off the train. Granted, the government can do much more to help people get treatment and stop punishing users. But they damn sure do need to punish people who intentionally create drug addicts and that’s what this is about.
- daveevad 6y agowhat kind of legal bill would this have all required to pull-off?
- BaronVonSteuben 6y agoI know everybody loves to hate on the Sacklers, but my life was dramatically better when I had access to opioids. Because of the "crisis" it has gotten really difficult to get them, even for people who need them. There are days when it's difficult to do much more than lie in bed in agony, but nobody beyond a small community of other pain sufferers seems to care. I'm at least grateful for the few good years I did get thanks to opioids, before they became radioactive. I hope some day we can swing the pendulum back toward compassion a bit. Everybody seems to want politicians and cops (DEA) deciding who should get them and who shouldn't. That may be an impossible mindset to change.
- dogman144 6y agoWhy aren't you a candidate for legal thc? I'm genuinely interested as it comes up a lot as the new solution for former legitimate opioid users.
- BaronVonSteuben 6y agoI have used it extensively over the years but it doesn't work all that well for me and comes with really bad side effects (like making me super tired, which makes it really hard to work), making me insatiably hungry, etc. I've tried all kinds of different combos and it's a nice tool for the toolbox, but it's by no means a replacement for me. I might also add I don't enjoy being high at all. I really prefer to have a clear head, especially during the day while I'm working. I've tried strains that are supposed to be good for that but they don't really work on the pain.
- isbjorn16 6y ago
- psychanarch 6y agoUnfortunately, unjust settlements like this are common place in our country, and after the outrage cycle dies down, this will be forgotten like the others. Nothing changes. What can we possibly do?
- javajosh 6y agoStart by reforming the justice system. It is badly broken at all levels. It's slow speed, incredibly expensive interactions, and hard-to-understand system of laws need a big time upgrade. We need relatively simple laws that ordinary folks can understand, and a much faster time-to-judgement. It is really the complexity and cost of the system that leads to so many of these unjust outcomes, because hardly any actors in the system actually want to present their case and hear a verdict out of a judges mouth, because to get there takes years and millions of dollars.
- nashashmi 6y agoJustice cannot happen without input from the those who are on the other side, the indicted. You quickly realize justice TRIES to be a really bad cop. And then the indicted /convicted have to make deals for something that is terribly unfair. Just imagine negotiating with a person like Kamala. When I see light weight no benefit deals like this, I think that it looks like both prosecutor and defendant got away with murder with little effort. Further, let's stop the rhetoric that severe punishments will stop bad crimes. Not true. Even the lightest of punishments can stop crimes simply with shame. If more people get caught and are able to reconcile for their crimes, that would be sufficient to prevent 95 percent of future crimes.
- javajosh 6y agoThis is all true, but I think its a symptom of a more fundamental problem, which is the complexity of the system, and the attendant speed and cost problems that drive agents to these outcomes. If the system worked transparently and quickly, then a lot of the other problems would go away. Plea deals should be the exception, not the rule.
- deleted 6y ago
- wombatmobile 6y agoDupont made more than $30 billion profit selling Teflon for almost 50 years, polluting the environment by dumping untreated toxic waste from the manufacturing process into virgin West Virginia landscapes the whole time. In February 2017, DuPont settled over 3,550 lawsuits for $671 million. Dark Waters Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY
- spaetzleesser 6y agoWe really have to stop letting wealthy people and corporations buy their way out of legal problems. Fines and settlements clearly don't stop bad behavior as banks and polluters have been showing repeatedly. The whole thing feels like a protection racket where it's ok to do illegal stuff as long as the government gets its cut. Either somebody has to go to jail or the fines have to be on a level that they lose all of their illicit profits and more. Not just a part as it is now.
- titzer 6y agoIMHO, If corporations are people, then corporations can go to jail.
- chrisweekly 6y ago^ THIS! So much this. Citizen's United is an abomination, but while it stands its tenets should at least be applied consistently. Also, there's a difference between capitalism and corporatism. I say that as the owner of a C-Corp.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deeeeplearning 6y agoNo we just need to completely get rid of all regulations and Corporations will totally stop doing nefarious things becuz of da market... They only do bad things now because those Commie Democrats put regulations on them. /s
- abellerose 6y agoIt pays so well to be the bad guy. I imagine this fact would be an extra sting to anyone that lost a loved one and there is nothing anyone can do in their lifetime to change the system to prevent it. Been this way since the dawn of time.
- ponker 6y agoSurprised that a parent of a child lost to opioids hasn’t put a Lapua Magnum in at least one of these guys.
- enchiridion 6y agoThis is a misleading headline. It is part of an $8.3B settlement. Edit: I should have read the whole article. The $225M is against the $11B the family has siphoned from Purdue.
- imcoconut 6y agoCorrect. I do believe what they did was quite evil, and they should be disgorged of all profits - and if that bankrupts them then all the better. While 8.3bn is still not the 11bn they made in profits, it's still significantly more than 225mn. The headline is misleading.
- randomfool 6y agoIncorrect- the family has already drained $10.7B from the company and are only being fined $225M themselves- they are not responsible for any other portion of the $8.3B. The family will lose control of the company in bankruptcy but they knew this was coming and drained it ahead of time. DoJ is letting them get away with it.
- imcoconut 6y agoI see, thanks for the correction. I thought the I guess if they wholly owned the company then legally they should be allowed to transfer the cash/profits, generally speaking. But if there was ongoing prosecution and they did it specifically to avoid having to actually pay the 8.3bn bill being stuck with the company then that definitely sounds illegal. If they transferred the profits to personal accounts then they should still be personally liable for all of it.
- horsawlarway 6y agoThey, personally, are paying 225 million. The company, of which they likely will not retain control, is settling for ~8billion. Importantly, the company itself DOES NOT HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY. It is expected to pay it off over time, assuming it remains solvent. The Sacklers, on the other hand, have drained nearly 10 billion dollars from the company account into their personal estate, and are retaining all but 225 million of it. --- My hot take - They can keep the fucking money, let them buy as much ramen from the prison commissary as they'd like.
- rpgmaker 6y agoBig Pharma is an easy villain to hate (and there's a lot to hate) but why aren't the doctors who prescribed all these drugs being held accountable as well?
- spaetzleesser 6y agoBoth should be held accountable. Unfortunately people like to identify single villains or problems instead of realizing that there are many bad players. this is the problem with the whole US health system. Pretty much all parties involved (except the patient) make a lot of money but when people look for a solution they always they to find the one root cause. In reality it's hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and many others that live well off this insane system.
- smegger001 6y agoBecause the doctors were lied to by Big Pharma. they advertised Oxycontin to doctors as a drug that would not create addiction and claimed that is was safe to prescribe in large doses and for ongoing treatment.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoSome are. There's been quite a few stories of doctors who got shut down for running what the news likes to call "pill mills". Most doctors just didn't overprescribe all that much, though.
- frankwiles 6y agoRead that as Slackers ...
- pyrophane 6y agoOne thing to note about this settlement is that it does not make them immune from additional criminal charges in the future. I don't know how likely it is we would ever see criminal charges here, but it isn't a "sweetheart deal" in that sense.
- divbzero 6y agoRunning the math for reference: $225,000,000 ÷ $11,000,000,000 ≈ 2.0%
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chrisweekly 6y agoImagine those numbers on a smaller scale. "Son, your greedy schemes that made you $11 hurt a lot of people, so you have to give back 25 cents."
- Gunax 6y agoSince this will inevitably turn to a discussion of opioids, here are some counter-narrative facts that surprised me: 1. The narrative is that some poor guy took pain meds for a legimate reason then ended up addicted. While this does occur, it's actually not very common. > Among people who are prescribed opioids, addiction is relatively uncommon. The percentage of patients who become addicted after taking opioids for chronic pain is measured in the single digits; studies show an incidence from less than 1 percent to 8 percent. Most of the estimates are skewed toward the low end of this range, when those at risk (due to a history of substance abuse or, to a lesser but meaningful extent, a concurrent mental illness) are removed from the sample. 2. Most addicts had a history of drug abuse. > People who abuse pills are rarely new to drugs. The federal government’s 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, for example, revealed that more than three-fourths of misusers had used non-prescribed benzodiazepines, such as Valium or Xanax, or inhalants. A study of Oxycontin users in treatment found that they “were not naive individuals with accidental addictions who were introduced to painkillers by their physicians as reported by the media … [Instead they had] extensive drug use histories.” It's hard to bring this up without straying into classism or victim blaming. The reality is that most people without comorbidities and abuse history are quite safe, and these are drugs we need. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-america-got-wrong-about-opioid-crisis/595090/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-ameri...
- Balgair 6y agoFor reference, this is ~7.5 cents per prescription given out in the US from 2006 to 2018. I've no idea how to break that down into a per pill basis, but it's likely to be much less than a cent per pill. I very much doubt that the Sacklers profited less than a cent per pill though. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html
- tibbydudeza 6y agoAll animals are equal , but some are more equal than others.