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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

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
Prohibition proved people want alcohol regardless of the damage it does but we don't need people pushing new societal harms just because the old ones are embedded in the culture. No horse in this race but they were handing out opiods like candy to people who thought it was safe because the doctor gave it to them to solve a medical (not leisure) issue.
gammarator 5y ago
“Hard drugs should be legal” is not the same as “addiction is good.” This thread lays out compactly some of the Sacklers’ perfidy: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1085959572886560768 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1085959572886560768
int_19h 5y ago
I believe that hard drugs should be legalized, broadly speaking, but opioids are an exception because of their extreme inherent physical addictiveness. For stuff like that, I would argue that possession and use should still be legal, but distribution should be regulated to ensure that anybody who does get it, has ample warning about the effects, and makes an informed decision to use them anyway.
leetcrew 5y ago
I'll bite. I strongly support legalization and simultaneously feel that purdue is seriously in the wrong here. the crime isn't selling oxycodone. pharmaceutical companies are allowed to do that. they're not allowed to make claims about how their time-release formulation makes oxycodone much less addictive, when they know that isn't true (or at least lack sufficient evidence). on top of that, they gave financial incentives to doctors to write prescriptions. while I don't think it would be appropriate to have heroin for sale at CVS, I do think people should have some way of purchasing pure forms of the drug after being educated on the risks. that doesn't imply that I have to accept fraudulent marketing of a dangerous product and corruption of the doctor-patient relationship.
- hash872 5y ago
  I can basically agree with this, and I was being slightly provocative. On the other hand, it's become accepted wisdom that the Sacklers are Literally Hitler, and I guess I don't think puffery in marketing is really that horrendous of a moral crime. I also don't really believe that anyone who became addicted to opioids did so specifically because of their marketing practices, and would never have started without said marketing- sorry, I think that's patently absurd. We have centuries of human beings becoming extremely addicted to hard drugs with no marketing campaigns required
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    I still judge them a bit more harshly, but I do think the sacklers have essentially become the scapegoat for a problem that went far beyond perdue. painkiller prescriptions in the '00s were really wild. I remember a classmate got a thirty day supply of percocet (IR, no time release) when he got his wisdom teeth out. that's simply reckless. nowadays you would probably get less than a weeks worth or even just a recommendation to try ibuprofen first. the government crackdown on overprescription didn't help either. that was when people started overdosing from fentanyl-laced heroin en masse.
locallost 5y ago
that's to me a bit like saying if cars are legal to sell, why is it illegal to fake the odometer before selling your used car. being in favor of decriminalization does not mean that anything goes and that you can knowingly mislead people so that they become addicted, which is what at least the claim against the Sacklers is. Decriminalization also goes hand in hand with redirecting the outrageous amounts of money spent on policing to education on what you're getting yourself into.
plandis 5y ago
The perceived wrong doing isn’t that they sold drugs, but rather that they intentionally lied about the properties of their drugs. You can run a pot shop legally in Washington state but you cannot lie about what you are selling. Is that not one of the arguments for legalization of drugs in the first place? With legalization the drugs can be regulated and monitored for quality, purity, etc…
- hash872 5y ago
  Do you really honestly believe that anyone that became addicted really listened intently to Purdue Company marketing and made an informed decision based on that? That if the marketing was more cautious, they would have made a rational decision not use Oxycontin instead? Because I, to put it politely, don't think that's really how human behavior works. I mean, we have 500+ years of human history where people have become addicted to hard drugs without a marketing campaign. Including many in that same heroin/opium/morphine family. Maybe Occam's Razor is that people would've done the oxys regardless of what the Sacklers disclosed about the chemical compound....?

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

Prohibition proved people want alcohol regardless of the damage it does but we don't need people pushing new societal harms just because the old ones are embedded in the culture. No horse in this race but they were handing out opiods like candy to people who thought it was safe because the doctor gave it to them to solve a medical (not leisure) issue.

gammarator 5y ago

“Hard drugs should be legal” is not the same as “addiction is good.” This thread lays out compactly some of the Sacklers’ perfidy: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1085959572886560768 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1085959572886560768

int_19h 5y ago

I believe that hard drugs should be legalized, broadly speaking, but opioids are an exception because of their extreme inherent physical addictiveness. For stuff like that, I would argue that possession and use should still be legal, but distribution should be regulated to ensure that anybody who does get it, has ample warning about the effects, and makes an informed decision to use them anyway.

leetcrew 5y ago

I'll bite. I strongly support legalization and simultaneously feel that purdue is seriously in the wrong here. the crime isn't selling oxycodone. pharmaceutical companies are allowed to do that. they're not allowed to make claims about how their time-release formulation makes oxycodone much less addictive, when they know that isn't true (or at least lack sufficient evidence). on top of that, they gave financial incentives to doctors to write prescriptions. while I don't think it would be appropriate to have heroin for sale at CVS, I do think people should have some way of purchasing pure forms of the drug after being educated on the risks. that doesn't imply that I have to accept fraudulent marketing of a dangerous product and corruption of the doctor-patient relationship.

hash872 5y ago
I can basically agree with this, and I was being slightly provocative. On the other hand, it's become accepted wisdom that the Sacklers are Literally Hitler, and I guess I don't think puffery in marketing is really that horrendous of a moral crime. I also don't really believe that anyone who became addicted to opioids did so specifically because of their marketing practices, and would never have started without said marketing- sorry, I think that's patently absurd. We have centuries of human beings becoming extremely addicted to hard drugs with no marketing campaigns required
- leetcrew 5y ago
  I still judge them a bit more harshly, but I do think the sacklers have essentially become the scapegoat for a problem that went far beyond perdue. painkiller prescriptions in the '00s were really wild. I remember a classmate got a thirty day supply of percocet (IR, no time release) when he got his wisdom teeth out. that's simply reckless. nowadays you would probably get less than a weeks worth or even just a recommendation to try ibuprofen first. the government crackdown on overprescription didn't help either. that was when people started overdosing from fentanyl-laced heroin en masse.

locallost 5y ago

that's to me a bit like saying if cars are legal to sell, why is it illegal to fake the odometer before selling your used car. being in favor of decriminalization does not mean that anything goes and that you can knowingly mislead people so that they become addicted, which is what at least the claim against the Sacklers is. Decriminalization also goes hand in hand with redirecting the outrageous amounts of money spent on policing to education on what you're getting yourself into.

plandis 5y ago

The perceived wrong doing isn’t that they sold drugs, but rather that they intentionally lied about the properties of their drugs. You can run a pot shop legally in Washington state but you cannot lie about what you are selling. Is that not one of the arguments for legalization of drugs in the first place? With legalization the drugs can be regulated and monitored for quality, purity, etc…

hash872 5y ago
Do you really honestly believe that anyone that became addicted really listened intently to Purdue Company marketing and made an informed decision based on that? That if the marketing was more cautious, they would have made a rational decision not use Oxycontin instead? Because I, to put it politely, don't think that's really how human behavior works. I mean, we have 500+ years of human history where people have become addicted to hard drugs without a marketing campaign. Including many in that same heroin/opium/morphine family. Maybe Occam's Razor is that people would've done the oxys regardless of what the Sacklers disclosed about the chemical compound....?