11 ms·

Sacklers granted lifetime legal immunity in opioid settlement

160 points by samizdis 5y ago

sschueller 5y ago
So they got their immunity and will be richer than now once they paid the fine over the extremely long period they negotiated. Additionally they don't plead guilty and get away effectively scott free. I guess crime pays if you get rich enough. Way to set and example for the next one.
- belter 5y ago
  You are correct. Now call your representative and ask them why they agreed.... "15 States Sign on to Proposed $4.5B Opioid Settlement With Purdue Pharma, Sackler Family" https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/07/12/15-states-including-new-york-sign-on-to-proposed-4-5-billion-settlement-with-purdue-pharma-sackler-family/ https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/07/12/15-states-including-...
  - mikestew 5y ago
    I don't know if they agreed or not, based on that article, as it doesn't list any state other than NY. Paywall or not, at least the NYT gives the list: "In addition to Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota, the other states who have signed on include Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/health/purdue-pharma-opioids-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/health/purdue-pharma-opio...
Gunax 5y ago
So when we legalize all drugs because 'the drug war isn't working' (something I agree with) who do we sue then? I just think the public is overly reactive to whatever problem is at hand. When the drugs are causing crime we want them legalised. When they are causing addiction we want to producers prosecuted. Opiods helped a lot of people. And the media has constructed this narrative around them being highly addictive which isn't really true.
- amznthrwaway 5y ago
  Opiods aren’t useless, but it is absurd to see claims that they aren’t highly addictive, and that addictiveness is merely a media narrative.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  legalization is really an orthogonal issue. opioid painkillers are a very useful class of drugs that also have serious potential for addiction. doctors understand this and must balance the risk/benefit trade off. the problem here is not that purdue sold addictive drugs, it is that the company intentionally deceived the public about how addictive their formulation is. even if all drugs were fully legal, it still ought to be illegal to misrepresent your product this way.
  - Gunax 5y ago
    Well I agree. It is the misrepresentation that gets them in trouble. The reason I bring it up is that it's a good test of what will happen if we do legalise drugs. So the claim is that there were a bunch of so-called pain clinics, but which were in reality just fronts for prescribing opioids to addicts. This might be true. But that's effectively the same result as what we will have if we fully legalize drugs--they are just proposing we replace the 'pain clinics' with 'dispensaries' and dispense with the wink-wink claims of addicts needing to feign shoulder/back/whatever pain. I actually lean in favour of legalizing drugs, but I just sense a bit of hypocrisy and pitchfork-raising in the internet mob.
adoxyz 5y ago
Must be nice to be rich enough that you never face consequences for anything you do.
- White_Wolf 5y ago
  True. This made me realize that being a drug dealer does pay if you sell enough. P.S. I'm being ironic... sort of.
- kuraudo 5y ago
  it's nice until the guillotines return.
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  > Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. -- Simone Weil
xhkkffbf 5y ago
I'm certainly willing to hate the Sacklers, but it should be remembered that they didn't work alone. Nor did Purdue. The FDA approved their drugs. The doctors prescribed them and the pharmacists filled these scripts. What they did was entirely legal. They filled out the forms. Got the government approval and worked within the system. It strikes me as a bit unfair for society to turn around, designate them as a scape goat and then ask them to pay for the sins of everyone.
- chuckee 5y ago
  That's because the maker of a drug is expected to know more about it than doctors. And when that maker conceals information about it with the deliberate aim of causing overprescription, we are justified in blaming them far more than the doctors they fooled. Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information. - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...
  - bryan0 5y ago
    > When the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin in late 1995, the agency permitted Purdue Pharma to make a unique claim for it — that its long-acting formulation was “believed to reduce” its appeal to drug abusers compared with shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin. It seems like both the FDA and Purdue thought / hoped it would be less addictive, but this was not to be the case. And after it became clear from real-world data that this was not true, the FDA still didn't do anything about it? > a Canadian physician, Dr. Brian Goldman, wrote that the findings turned thinking about the supposed safety of long-acting opioids like OxyContin on its head by showing that drug abusers “coveted” such drugs. “This should ring alarm bells,” Dr. Goldman, who was then a paid speaker for Purdue Pharma, wrote in the editorial. Why wouldn't the FDA act on this alarm? Why would we rely on a pharmaceutical company to police its own drug when there is a clearly a massive conflict of interest? Isn't this what the FDA is for?
- jessaustin 5y ago
  If the last twenty years have taught us anything, it is that unimaginable amounts of unconscionable evil may be done "legally". That is certainly not the criterion to which thinking people should limit our judgment. We subjects don't decide our laws and regulations. [0] Instead, those are written by lawyers and lobbyists in the employ of reptiles like the Sacklers. They make the rules by which they play, so when we're told to "hate the game, not the players", well, they get that hate too. [0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
Wonnk13 5y ago
Man if you're Andy Fastow or Jeff Skilling you must be kicking yourself right now. Post 9/11 I can't think of many white collar criminals actually doing jail time. I guess we'll see where Holmes ends up. This whole thing is just so infuriating. I feel powerless to affect change against an entire system that increasingly feels like it was designed to protect families like the Sacklers. Sorry for a political rant on HN...
- all2 5y ago
  Class differences are understated or poopooed in American politics. But class divides are very real and they marr everything you see, including the Sacklers getting a pass. > feels like it was designed to protect families That's because it is designed to protect them. When a good enough team of lawyers can free you from consequences, it equates to being able to buy off justice. When the majority of financial instrument controls are designed to limit the financial activity of the layman, who does it benefit? Just yesterday I was fighting with my bank about how much I could spend on a single purchase. It was a startlingly low number. The amount I can actually withdraw from an ATM at any point in time is lower. And what divides the classes most is the law. The law benefits those who can navigate it effectively. This boils down to people wealthy enough to buy, barrow, and steal professionals to navigate it for them. If the law were simple, everyone would benefit because everyone could navigate it easily. All that to say, you aren't the only one.
  - samizdis 5y ago
    There's a Bloomberg opinion piece from earlier today [1] that focuses on shopping around for "friendly" jurisdictions for bankruptcy hearings. It focuses on the judge in this case (Robert Drain). Excerpt: Bankruptcy lawyers can shop for venues they think will be favorable to their case, and a lot of them bring their corporate clients to Drain’s court. And though Drain told the Wall Street Journal last year that any notion of legal friendliness was “an offensive fantasy,” the bitterly fought settlement in the Purdue Pharma case he announced from the bench on Wednesday would seem to provide ammunition for his critics. A worthwhile read, in my opinion. [1] https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-ruling-lets-sacklers-off-the-hook https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/purdue-pharma-oxyconti...
naasking 5y ago
Once again, the political and judicial systems are revealed as a farce.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  The voters are revealed - they do nothing and vote for people who do nothing about these problems. Did you do anything?
pydry 5y ago
Ill bet every small time marijuana dealer doing hard time is feeling pretty great about this.
iforgetti 5y ago
Highly recommend Empire if Pain about the Sacklers and how they got away with these crimes. Longer story short they piped the earnings from the opioid crisis out of company for decades and then when the net was finally closing on them, they filed for bankruptcy in a court of their choice with a very favorable judge. It is this same judge who granted the full immunity. Disgusting.
cs702 5y ago
Even the judge who approved the settlement feels that something is deeply wrong with it: > "This is a bitter result," Federal Judge Robert Drain said Wednesday in a lengthy explanation of his approval of the settlement. "I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties also have liability for those [opioid] claims... I would have expected a higher settlement." Several states have already announced plans to appeal the settlement. This is unlikely to be the last word we hear about this.
at_a_remove 5y ago
It's a settlement. That means that both sides give something up. The Sacklers would have to be complete morons(indeed, self-destructive morons) to have a settlement that did not include legal immunity, because otherwise they will get sued again and again and again. "Sure, we will give you this money and then someone else can file a lawsuit against us later" is not a stance you can reasonably expect out of anyone. Instead, we ought to be asking "Why settle?" If you want to understand what's going on instead of feeding the outrage beast that the media has been nurturing in you for the last couple of decades, ask that question. And it's a good question: if it is such a slam-dunk, why did the government say, "Sure, we'll settle?" Possible answers -- ones that someone could maybe do something about -- would include "Because the lawyers would eat up all of the money" and "There was a payoff to the right parties" and "The government wants the money now instead of later" (this one can be thrown out given the fine repayment period) and "the government feared losing its case." Feel free to add more. It's a lot more constructive than being pointlessly angry.
- tomdell 5y ago
  The media doesn’t need to feed my outrage - I have multiple relatives and friends who have died from OxyContin. The Sacklers should have the entirety of their wealth confiscated, at the very least - it’s all blood money. This agreement is infuriating.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    This case might be appealed outside of the courts? Given the general antipathy for them, perhaps the Sacklers would be well-advised to pay special attention to their personal security in the decades to come... I don't have a dog in this fight, but I know where my sympathies will lie when it happens.
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      I doubt anyone will ever render their justice, the blame is too diffuse. There is so much vigilantism against the pushers on the street that it never gets all the way to the top.
recursivedoubts 5y ago
Feel like there's a Liam Neeson movie in here somewhere... "Settled"
CAX 5y ago
Delete hacker news
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Why?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
m0zg 5y ago
Yet Shkreli is still in prison. Probably just failed to pay off the right people. In contrast, Epstein who quite literally trafficked children to the elites was on "work release" during his first stint in jail, and if the powers that be had their way he'd never see the inside of the jail cell at all. He also did not kill himself during his second stint in jail.
hash872 5y ago
Maybe this isn't constructive or will get downvoted, but I'd be interested to see the overlap between HN commenters who are very outraged by this/doing lots of emotive moralizing, and also the typical HN libertarian who thinks that hard drugs should be legalized. I mean you have to realize that these positions contradict each other, right? If you think the Sacklers are awful monsters for I guess selling a member of the heroin family, you have to basically be for hard drugs being illegal- aka the continuation of the War On Drugs. I did a number of hard drugs in my misspent youth, including Oxycontin. It was available and people in my social circle did it, and the Sackler family played zero role in my decision. More broadly I think hard drugs should be decriminalized (I am decades past using them myself). I guess I'm a little unclear as to what exactly the Sacklers did that's so terrible. Seeing as alcohol probably wrecks 10x the social damage that opioids do, are the Coors family monsters? The guy who founded Sam Adams or manufactures Smirnoff? What's the distinction?
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  There is a huge difference between advocating for the right to use drugs freely and intentionally manipulating the medical and legal system so you can sell a highly addictive drug for truckloads of money.
- abraae 5y ago
  The sacklers product was sold as a medicine. Many people started on it as such. You on the other hand knew what you were getting into. Big difference.
  - hash872 5y ago
    And it continues to be a medicine. If God forbid you broke a limb, burned yourself, shocked yourself, were bitten by something.... you'd want a painkiller stat. I just watched an older relative cautiously take an opioid for pain relief when she needed it after an injury. Are you.... arguing against the concept of painkillers? How is it not a medicine? Should we do surgery with whiskey, 19th century-style?
- Riverheart 5y ago
seaourfreed 5y ago
Our government sells out to the wealthy. Our government is corrupt.
the-dude 5y ago
With all the talk about China and their handling of CEOs lately, let us ask ourselves, what would China have done ?
- throwrqX 5y ago
  Probably have them executed after a public trial.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Yes. yes. But what about the money?
nonameiguess 5y ago
Just remember that Jeffrey Epstein was also granted immunity from future prosecution in 2007 in return for getting 3 1/2 months in an unlocked cell in a private wing of a Palm Beach minimum security resort. It didn't ultimately work as a combination of media exposes causing public outrage and his many victims sueing him anyway eventually got the government to renege on the deal, the man who originally granted it to resign in shame, and Epstein is dead now. I, of course, wish we didn't need to rely on a future spiraling outrage cycle to force the Justice Department to actually hold rich criminals accountable for their crimes, but there is at least some solace in the hope that it might happen to the Sackler family, too.
smartician 5y ago
I don't quite understand how a settlement in a bankruptcy case can include an immunity provision against future criminal charges. What is the mechanism for that?
belter 5y ago
For a more global audience, in case you might be wondering what this is all about: Opioids III: The Sacklers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver https://youtu.be/uaCaIhfETsM https://youtu.be/uaCaIhfETsM
moistrobot 5y ago
I suspect we'll see the same thing happen in 4-5 years with COVID vaccine manufacturers this comment will age well
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  Vaccine liability claims in the United States are handled by the federal government [0]. I can guarantee with absolute certainty that we won’t see this same situation with COVID vaccines, as Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J don’t have any liability for their vaccines, as they were created during a public health emergency [1][2] The reasoning is nobody would make vaccines if they had unlimited liability. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Comp... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency_Preparedness_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergen... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/247d-6d https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/247d-6d
plandis 5y ago
How can a bankruptcy case for a company result in immunity for individuals from being sued in future lawsuits pertaining to the opioid crisis? Is this a common thing that happens in bankruptcy cases? Is this really justice?

160 points by samizdis 5y ago

So they got their immunity and will be richer than now once they paid the fine over the extremely long period they negotiated. Additionally they don't plead guilty and get away effectively scott free. I guess crime pays if you get rich enough. Way to set and example for the next one.

belter 5y ago
You are correct. Now call your representative and ask them why they agreed.... "15 States Sign on to Proposed $4.5B Opioid Settlement With Purdue Pharma, Sackler Family" https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/07/12/15-states-including-new-york-sign-on-to-proposed-4-5-billion-settlement-with-purdue-pharma-sackler-family/ https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/07/12/15-states-including-...
- mikestew 5y ago
  I don't know if they agreed or not, based on that article, as it doesn't list any state other than NY. Paywall or not, at least the NYT gives the list: "In addition to Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota, the other states who have signed on include Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/health/purdue-pharma-opioids-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/health/purdue-pharma-opio...

Gunax 5y ago

So when we legalize all drugs because 'the drug war isn't working' (something I agree with) who do we sue then? I just think the public is overly reactive to whatever problem is at hand. When the drugs are causing crime we want them legalised. When they are causing addiction we want to producers prosecuted. Opiods helped a lot of people. And the media has constructed this narrative around them being highly addictive which isn't really true.

amznthrwaway 5y ago
Opiods aren’t useless, but it is absurd to see claims that they aren’t highly addictive, and that addictiveness is merely a media narrative.
leetcrew 5y ago
legalization is really an orthogonal issue. opioid painkillers are a very useful class of drugs that also have serious potential for addiction. doctors understand this and must balance the risk/benefit trade off. the problem here is not that purdue sold addictive drugs, it is that the company intentionally deceived the public about how addictive their formulation is. even if all drugs were fully legal, it still ought to be illegal to misrepresent your product this way.
- Gunax 5y ago
  Well I agree. It is the misrepresentation that gets them in trouble. The reason I bring it up is that it's a good test of what will happen if we do legalise drugs. So the claim is that there were a bunch of so-called pain clinics, but which were in reality just fronts for prescribing opioids to addicts. This might be true. But that's effectively the same result as what we will have if we fully legalize drugs--they are just proposing we replace the 'pain clinics' with 'dispensaries' and dispense with the wink-wink claims of addicts needing to feign shoulder/back/whatever pain. I actually lean in favour of legalizing drugs, but I just sense a bit of hypocrisy and pitchfork-raising in the internet mob.

adoxyz 5y ago

Must be nice to be rich enough that you never face consequences for anything you do.

White_Wolf 5y ago
True. This made me realize that being a drug dealer does pay if you sell enough. P.S. I'm being ironic... sort of.
kuraudo 5y ago
it's nice until the guillotines return.
howaboutnope 5y ago
> Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. -- Simone Weil

xhkkffbf 5y ago

I'm certainly willing to hate the Sacklers, but it should be remembered that they didn't work alone. Nor did Purdue. The FDA approved their drugs. The doctors prescribed them and the pharmacists filled these scripts. What they did was entirely legal. They filled out the forms. Got the government approval and worked within the system. It strikes me as a bit unfair for society to turn around, designate them as a scape goat and then ask them to pay for the sins of everyone.

chuckee 5y ago
That's because the maker of a drug is expected to know more about it than doctors. And when that maker conceals information about it with the deliberate aim of causing overprescription, we are justified in blaming them far more than the doctors they fooled. Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information. - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...
- bryan0 5y ago
  > When the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin in late 1995, the agency permitted Purdue Pharma to make a unique claim for it — that its long-acting formulation was “believed to reduce” its appeal to drug abusers compared with shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin. It seems like both the FDA and Purdue thought / hoped it would be less addictive, but this was not to be the case. And after it became clear from real-world data that this was not true, the FDA still didn't do anything about it? > a Canadian physician, Dr. Brian Goldman, wrote that the findings turned thinking about the supposed safety of long-acting opioids like OxyContin on its head by showing that drug abusers “coveted” such drugs. “This should ring alarm bells,” Dr. Goldman, who was then a paid speaker for Purdue Pharma, wrote in the editorial. Why wouldn't the FDA act on this alarm? Why would we rely on a pharmaceutical company to police its own drug when there is a clearly a massive conflict of interest? Isn't this what the FDA is for?
jessaustin 5y ago
If the last twenty years have taught us anything, it is that unimaginable amounts of unconscionable evil may be done "legally". That is certainly not the criterion to which thinking people should limit our judgment. We subjects don't decide our laws and regulations. [0] Instead, those are written by lawyers and lobbyists in the employ of reptiles like the Sacklers. They make the rules by which they play, so when we're told to "hate the game, not the players", well, they get that hate too. [0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

Wonnk13 5y ago

Man if you're Andy Fastow or Jeff Skilling you must be kicking yourself right now. Post 9/11 I can't think of many white collar criminals actually doing jail time. I guess we'll see where Holmes ends up. This whole thing is just so infuriating. I feel powerless to affect change against an entire system that increasingly feels like it was designed to protect families like the Sacklers. Sorry for a political rant on HN...

all2 5y ago
Class differences are understated or poopooed in American politics. But class divides are very real and they marr everything you see, including the Sacklers getting a pass. > feels like it was designed to protect families That's because it is designed to protect them. When a good enough team of lawyers can free you from consequences, it equates to being able to buy off justice. When the majority of financial instrument controls are designed to limit the financial activity of the layman, who does it benefit? Just yesterday I was fighting with my bank about how much I could spend on a single purchase. It was a startlingly low number. The amount I can actually withdraw from an ATM at any point in time is lower. And what divides the classes most is the law. The law benefits those who can navigate it effectively. This boils down to people wealthy enough to buy, barrow, and steal professionals to navigate it for them. If the law were simple, everyone would benefit because everyone could navigate it easily. All that to say, you aren't the only one.
- samizdis 5y ago
  There's a Bloomberg opinion piece from earlier today [1] that focuses on shopping around for "friendly" jurisdictions for bankruptcy hearings. It focuses on the judge in this case (Robert Drain). Excerpt: Bankruptcy lawyers can shop for venues they think will be favorable to their case, and a lot of them bring their corporate clients to Drain’s court. And though Drain told the Wall Street Journal last year that any notion of legal friendliness was “an offensive fantasy,” the bitterly fought settlement in the Purdue Pharma case he announced from the bench on Wednesday would seem to provide ammunition for his critics. A worthwhile read, in my opinion. [1] https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-ruling-lets-sacklers-off-the-hook https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/purdue-pharma-oxyconti...

naasking 5y ago

Once again, the political and judicial systems are revealed as a farce.

wolverine876 5y ago
The voters are revealed - they do nothing and vote for people who do nothing about these problems. Did you do anything?

pydry 5y ago

Ill bet every small time marijuana dealer doing hard time is feeling pretty great about this.

iforgetti 5y ago

Highly recommend Empire if Pain about the Sacklers and how they got away with these crimes. Longer story short they piped the earnings from the opioid crisis out of company for decades and then when the net was finally closing on them, they filed for bankruptcy in a court of their choice with a very favorable judge. It is this same judge who granted the full immunity. Disgusting.

cs702 5y ago

Even the judge who approved the settlement feels that something is deeply wrong with it: > "This is a bitter result," Federal Judge Robert Drain said Wednesday in a lengthy explanation of his approval of the settlement. "I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties also have liability for those [opioid] claims... I would have expected a higher settlement." Several states have already announced plans to appeal the settlement. This is unlikely to be the last word we hear about this.

at_a_remove 5y ago

It's a settlement. That means that both sides give something up. The Sacklers would have to be complete morons(indeed, self-destructive morons) to have a settlement that did not include legal immunity, because otherwise they will get sued again and again and again. "Sure, we will give you this money and then someone else can file a lawsuit against us later" is not a stance you can reasonably expect out of anyone. Instead, we ought to be asking "Why settle?" If you want to understand what's going on instead of feeding the outrage beast that the media has been nurturing in you for the last couple of decades, ask that question. And it's a good question: if it is such a slam-dunk, why did the government say, "Sure, we'll settle?" Possible answers -- ones that someone could maybe do something about -- would include "Because the lawyers would eat up all of the money" and "There was a payoff to the right parties" and "The government wants the money now instead of later" (this one can be thrown out given the fine repayment period) and "the government feared losing its case." Feel free to add more. It's a lot more constructive than being pointlessly angry.

tomdell 5y ago
The media doesn’t need to feed my outrage - I have multiple relatives and friends who have died from OxyContin. The Sacklers should have the entirety of their wealth confiscated, at the very least - it’s all blood money. This agreement is infuriating.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  This case might be appealed outside of the courts? Given the general antipathy for them, perhaps the Sacklers would be well-advised to pay special attention to their personal security in the decades to come... I don't have a dog in this fight, but I know where my sympathies will lie when it happens.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    I doubt anyone will ever render their justice, the blame is too diffuse. There is so much vigilantism against the pushers on the street that it never gets all the way to the top.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

Feel like there's a Liam Neeson movie in here somewhere... "Settled"

CAX 5y ago

Delete hacker news

annoyingnoob 5y ago
Why?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 5y ago

Yet Shkreli is still in prison. Probably just failed to pay off the right people. In contrast, Epstein who quite literally trafficked children to the elites was on "work release" during his first stint in jail, and if the powers that be had their way he'd never see the inside of the jail cell at all. He also did not kill himself during his second stint in jail.

hash872 5y ago

Maybe this isn't constructive or will get downvoted, but I'd be interested to see the overlap between HN commenters who are very outraged by this/doing lots of emotive moralizing, and also the typical HN libertarian who thinks that hard drugs should be legalized. I mean you have to realize that these positions contradict each other, right? If you think the Sacklers are awful monsters for I guess selling a member of the heroin family, you have to basically be for hard drugs being illegal- aka the continuation of the War On Drugs. I did a number of hard drugs in my misspent youth, including Oxycontin. It was available and people in my social circle did it, and the Sackler family played zero role in my decision. More broadly I think hard drugs should be decriminalized (I am decades past using them myself). I guess I'm a little unclear as to what exactly the Sacklers did that's so terrible. Seeing as alcohol probably wrecks 10x the social damage that opioids do, are the Coors family monsters? The guy who founded Sam Adams or manufactures Smirnoff? What's the distinction?

CyberRabbi 5y ago
There is a huge difference between advocating for the right to use drugs freely and intentionally manipulating the medical and legal system so you can sell a highly addictive drug for truckloads of money.
abraae 5y ago
The sacklers product was sold as a medicine. Many people started on it as such. You on the other hand knew what you were getting into. Big difference.
- hash872 5y ago
  And it continues to be a medicine. If God forbid you broke a limb, burned yourself, shocked yourself, were bitten by something.... you'd want a painkiller stat. I just watched an older relative cautiously take an opioid for pain relief when she needed it after an injury. Are you.... arguing against the concept of painkillers? How is it not a medicine? Should we do surgery with whiskey, 19th century-style?
Riverheart 5y ago

seaourfreed 5y ago

Our government sells out to the wealthy. Our government is corrupt.

the-dude 5y ago

With all the talk about China and their handling of CEOs lately, let us ask ourselves, what would China have done ?

throwrqX 5y ago
Probably have them executed after a public trial.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Yes. yes. But what about the money?

nonameiguess 5y ago

Just remember that Jeffrey Epstein was also granted immunity from future prosecution in 2007 in return for getting 3 1/2 months in an unlocked cell in a private wing of a Palm Beach minimum security resort. It didn't ultimately work as a combination of media exposes causing public outrage and his many victims sueing him anyway eventually got the government to renege on the deal, the man who originally granted it to resign in shame, and Epstein is dead now. I, of course, wish we didn't need to rely on a future spiraling outrage cycle to force the Justice Department to actually hold rich criminals accountable for their crimes, but there is at least some solace in the hope that it might happen to the Sackler family, too.

smartician 5y ago

I don't quite understand how a settlement in a bankruptcy case can include an immunity provision against future criminal charges. What is the mechanism for that?

belter 5y ago

For a more global audience, in case you might be wondering what this is all about: Opioids III: The Sacklers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver https://youtu.be/uaCaIhfETsM https://youtu.be/uaCaIhfETsM

moistrobot 5y ago

I suspect we'll see the same thing happen in 4-5 years with COVID vaccine manufacturers this comment will age well

quickthrowman 5y ago
Vaccine liability claims in the United States are handled by the federal government [0]. I can guarantee with absolute certainty that we won’t see this same situation with COVID vaccines, as Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J don’t have any liability for their vaccines, as they were created during a public health emergency [1][2] The reasoning is nobody would make vaccines if they had unlimited liability. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Comp... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency_Preparedness_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergen... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/247d-6d https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/247d-6d

plandis 5y ago

How can a bankruptcy case for a company result in immunity for individuals from being sued in future lawsuits pertaining to the opioid crisis? Is this a common thing that happens in bankruptcy cases? Is this really justice?