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Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In

Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face civil and criminal liabilities for what they’ve done.

janice1999 2y ago
You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more than any of their wars, including their civil war.
- mktemp-d 2y ago
  A good book to read regarding this topic is "Death in Mud Lick" by Eric Eyre who was a reporter for a local newspaper in WV during the early discovery phase of the epidemic. The book details the methods used by the drug companies to pedal these drugs into small communities, the tragic victims, and lastly the refusal of drug suppliers to admit any wrong doing. There's also a slight dose (no pun intended) of WV AG's sheer incompetence on the matter due to donations and gifts by said drug suppliers. Super depressing book, but great read nonetheless.
  - checkyoursudo 2y ago
    *peddle
    - disillusioned 2y ago
      Fun fact: early opioid deliveries were actually, in fact, almost exclusively done by bicycle!
      - janalsncm 2y ago
        If they used those penny farthing bicycles I’m sure they needed quite a few painkillers.
  - mptest 2y ago
    Painkiller is a great little short series on them too. does a great job at portraying all of what you mention in a six hour tv format. it can get a little on the nose sometimes but the meat is 100% true
- treflop 2y ago
  Not to mention creating more homelessness, increasing crime and deteriorating our cities, strengthening Mexican drug cartels, providing business to suppliers in China. They have objectively made the world a worst place. I thought the lead guy was bad.
- sneak 2y ago
  7x as many people in the US die from cigarettes every hour, day, week, month, and year as from all opioids combined. Cigarettes don’t even require a prescription. If there is an opioid crisis, there is a 7x larger tobacco crisis, too.
  - jhgvh 2y ago
    Tobacco companies have paid out countless nine figure sums, smoking in public has gone from universal to mostly illegal, cig taxes have skyrocketed, etc… Tobacco has been treated as a crisis, and I have no doubt that if cigarettes had been invented by one specific family, that family would be hated. Weird that you don’t know any of this.
    - brobdingnag_pp 2y ago
      What’s weird is that people still think tobacco smoking is about nicotine being addictive and dangerous, when it is literally everything else in the smoke that makes it extremely addictive and mortally dangerous.
      - jhgvh 2y ago
        Can you please tell me which of these mandatory warning messages you feel fails to convey that cigarette smoke, on the whole, is dangerous? https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/labeling-and-warning-statements-tobacco-products/cigarette-labeling-and-health-warning-requirements https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/labeling-and-warning-st...
      - boxed 2y ago
        The nicotine is what makes it addictive, but everything else makes it deadly. This distinction is well known here in Sweden where we have snus, and also lower rates of lung cancer and cigarette use than the rest of Europe by a LOT.
        daemin 2y ago
        Though at the same time I would wager a larger rate of gum disease and mouth cancer than the rest of Europe by a lot.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. Which of those million died from Oxycontin overdoses, which of them died from hepatitis they caught when shooting up pills with a reused drug needle?
  - juliusgeo 2y ago
    That’s a good question. You should do some research. Maybe you can ask the families of the victims?
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      Don't have to. Virtually none. People die from the street heroin they bought as a substitute for the oxy they couldn't get once the DEA cracked down. You can see it on every fucking graph, the very week that the DEA did this, if the dates have enough resolution. This is why we don't ask "the families of the victims", because you're irrational with grief and can't process what the problem is.
      - dathayron 2y ago
        In America, if I shot you in the leg and you died years later from an infection incurred because of that bullet wound I can and likely would be charged with murder because of the long string of consequence caused by my action. So I can draw a pretty solid causal line from “my father died in a tent in the woods behind a gas station off of I-95 to the Oxy he was once on.” Maybe the pill itself didn’t directly kill him but it sure lead there. Perhaps I’m just too emotional here, having literally dealt with the above last month. Can’t think straight?
        NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        > if I shot you in the leg and you died years later from an infection incurred because of that bullet wound I can and likely would be charged with murder because of the long string of consequence caused by my action. Which is a useful convention, because it deters the sort of violence as "shooting people in legs". The analogy doesn't hold. Drug warriors like yourself murdered the OD junkies. Your policy murders, and somehow you perceive yourself as the overburdened heroes. Prohibition is a bizarre policy, and we don't prosecute beer brewers for drunk driving deaths, no matter how addicted the alcoholic was. You're a bad person. You make the world more miserable than it has to be with nothing more than your evil opinions. And nothing I can say will ever convince you of the truth. > Perhaps I’m just too emotional here, having literally dealt with the above last month. You're not just emotional, but irrational. I and others like me could fix the things that make you hurt, but you want more of the same. It is not the sadist who screams "the beatings will continue", it is masochists like yourself who beg for it, telling all involved their morale really will improve.
austin-cheney 2y ago
Maybe, but its more common than this one example and more than what most people can stomach. The real problem is these people are sociopaths, and the next set of sociopaths will do it again. They don't care who they hurt because they lack empathy and if killing people drives up profits then so be it. If you really want to show concern or right a wrong then find a way to better criminalize violations of accepted ethical norms. The best way to punish sociopaths is to take all their assets, embarrass them in public, and permanently bar them from practicing in the same industry. For example if a lawyer is disbarred they do not get a second chance.
- FpUser 2y ago
  >" better criminalize violations of accepted ethical norms" What a load of BS. Wat's next ? Burning witches? I think we are way over our heads with criminalization already and have created big underclass of people who have no second chance because of that. So no fuck you. P.S. Sure I'd like to see many of our masters in jail for fucking up with people's lives but that will not happen
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    There is no criminal underclass of convicted billionaire sociopaths. What are you talking about? Of course it won't happen if we continue to permit, excuse, and enable their behavior while crying about how hard life is.
    - FpUser 2y ago
      >"There is no criminal underclass of convicted billionaire sociopaths" To that I agree. However you can not make laws specifically criminalizing rich for "violations of accepted ethical norms". It will just open floodgates diverting regular and poor to underclass. This whole criminal background check should be made illegal with some very specific exceptions. It hunts people for the rest of their lives. Europe handles this situation much better in general from what I've heard.
      - 2y ago
addicted 2y ago
I’d argue it’s the opposite. Look at what’s happened since Oxycontin was heavily regulated. Opioid deaths in America have exploded by an order of magnitude. There’s a direct correlation between higher regulation of OxyContin and opioid deaths in the U.S. The Sacklers have done illegal stuff. Misrepresenting the addictiveness of their drugs (well, it was immoral and wrong…it’s not clear how illegal it was). But it’s quite clear that America had a parallel opioid crisis going on. By making OxyContin easily available, ie, a slow acting opioid (it had to be crushed to be fast acting) that was produced legitimately and had a legitimate supply chain so people were able to get exactly what they wanted, Purdue Pharma helped keep the number of opioid deaths under control. IOW, the U.S. has had an addiction crisis that is independent of prescription drugs whose cause is not clear yet because everyone has thrown the blame on Oxy instead of researching it. This is the same kind of drug crisis that hit inner cities in the 20th century but has hit rural areas in the 21st century. By providing easy access to regulated and legitimate opioids the Sacklers may have marginally worsened the addiction crisis, but they minimized the number of deaths and severe negative impacts. The moment Oxy and the other opioids were made less easy to get, the underlying drug crisis hadn’t gone anywhere, so instead the people suffering from the crisis had to get their opioids from illicit sources as opposed to the pharmacy, exposing them to all sorts of unregulated drugs that had all sorts of nonsense like Fenranyl mixed in, which causes the actual negative impacts of the drug crisis to explode. The funny thing is that when the entire country was just absolutely united at making the Sacklers the big bad evil, the actual people working on the ground trying to help those who were facing this drug crisis were predicting this exact situation and were asking authorities to not clamp down on Oxy. But they were all ignored and so we have a situation where opioid OD deaths have gone from a consistent 10-15,000/year (a rate which preceded Oxy) to about 50,000/yr now.
- sailingparrot 2y ago
  Sure, OxyContin is better than Fentanyl, and banning Oxy can push people to way more dangerous opioids. But before painting Purdue as a hero of the people, let’s remember that million of people were pushed to opioids through Oxy when they shouldn’t have in the first place. Purdue played a big part in creating the epidemic in the first place. People that are now pushed to harder drugs because of an addiction they got into for the sake of Purdue making more dough.
api 2y ago
Don't forget McKinsey: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids...
- geodel 2y ago
  I mean they were just leveraging synergies between drug company and drug regulator.
- pembrook 2y ago
  I always cringe whenever I see people giving McKinsey credit for stuff (good or bad). It's a powerpoint factory of 20-somethings with zero experience executing anything. To suggest the virtuous, humble Purdue management could never have figured out how to sell oxycontin and bend regulators--without the insight of a few powerpoint slides--gives me a chuckle. It's not like Purdue, a drug company, had any experience marketing drugs and dealing with regulators before, right? I mean, it must have been a super hard problem for them to solve. How do you sell an instant painkiller thats wildly addictive, while getting corrupt regulators to be corrupted? Impossible! Too bad they got duped by those evil 22-year old powerpoint geniuses at McKinsey, who are clearly the real villains of the story.
  - freetanga 2y ago
    You might be partially right, but McKinsey Senior Partners have a very long list of friends to call, many of them former McKinseys in positions of power. So while the shitty PowerPoint might seem as the product, the actual product might be trafficking influences and coordinating favors, getting insider information from a competitor, etc. In this case in particular, if memory serves, they were advising the FDA in parallel, and leaking information to the Purdues. No brain-dead 24yo Harvard grad did that. I would not give them any slack.
    - tgv 2y ago
      They also provide plausible deniability. "Look, we have independent research by a reputable firm."
elphinstone 2y ago
They all should be charged with mass murder. The corrupt judge who okayed the settlement deserves prison.
- bookaway 2y ago
  Just after the decision was announced, the victim's lawyers seemed to put out a statement decrying the decision since the victims are not going to be paid (soon?). Is this overzealousness on the part of the lawyers themselves wanting to get paid? Does any law person have a comment on the situation?
- criddell 2y ago
  Manslaughter maybe, but not murder. They didn't want to kill people using their drugs. That wouldn't make any sense. Also, I'd be careful about saying the judge (Robert Drain) is corrupt unless you can back that up with facts. You might be opening yourself up to a libel suit.
lenerdenator 2y ago
I like to think about it this way: I cannot name another family that helped introduce a nationwide need for a completely new type of first aid, that being naloxone. It's not just ambulances; it's in police cars, pharmacies, libraries, schools, and workplaces. A complete deployment throughout the third-largest society in the world, in less than ten years, because of the frequency of overdose. Just consider that for a moment.
- walterbell 2y ago
  Gabapentoids (e.g. pregabalin, gabapentin) need similar scrutiny, as they are routinely prescribed to millions of elderly people, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265598/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265598/ > gabapentinoids are increasingly being used for off-label conditions despite the lack of evidence. Prescription rates for off-label conditions have overtaken that for on-label use. Similarly, the use of gabapentinoids in the perioperative period is now embedded in clinical practice despite conflicting evidence. This article summarises the risks associated with this increasing use. There is increasing evidence of the potential to cause harm in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and increasing prevalence of abuse. The risk of respiratory depression in combination with opioids is of particular concern in the context of the current opioid crisis.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Where was the FDA? Were the doctors all innocent? Is stupidity a good criminal defense? They should be all in the same cell.
- Retric 2y ago
  FDA has some culpability, but the fraud was so effective Medical Schools where teaching students to prescribe more opioids. Perdue Pharma effectively hacked the medical system. I think the real takeaway is there’s likely more of this going on than we realize. The common decongestant phenylephrine being no more effective than placebo comes to mind. Without the mass deaths there’s apparently little to stop modern snake oil salesman. Perhaps the FDA needs to conduct direct hands on oversight of medical trials? I mean if there’s billions to be made and little chance of prison the incentives get crazy.
  - rallison 2y ago
    There is a phenomenal article in Scientific American talking about the phenylephrine/pseudoephedrine debacle: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacists-figured-out-that-decongestants-dont-work/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacis... It's sort of a different class of failure than with opioids, but it is a notable area of weakness. Basically, for OTC drugs that were initially approved before 1962, many are still on the market despite sometimes having weak efficacy data. While the FDA has been making some progress in reevaluating these older drugs, we're still far from where we should be. A few quotes from the conclusion of the article (but the entire piece I linked in SA is worth a read!): > In 2023, 16 external experts on the second Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee looked at all the evidence compiled by FDA staff, heard manufacturers' arguments in favor of oral phenylephrine's efficacy, and heard from experts like me who argued that oral phenylephrine is ineffective. In the end, they concluded that oral phenylephrine is not GRASE. A final ruling on whether decongestants containing the drug can still be sold will take time. We hope science will prevail. > From this experience we've learned that the monograph process for OTC drugs approved before 1962 needs to be reexamined. Systematic reviews of the available evidence indicate that other nonprescription drugs such as guaifenesin (sold in Mucinex and Robitussin), dextromethorphan (sold in Robitussin DM) and antihistamines marketed for colds (for instance, chlorpheniramine) probably don't help with coughs and colds. They are usually not dangerous, but their effects are likely to be the result of a placebo response; more modern research is needed. > The outcome for oral phenylephrine shows that the FDA needs more funding to look at old drugs. We need public funds to support independent researchers who want to examine these products objectively. The government should be able to spend millions to save consumers billions on ineffective products. Companies that market these products have no incentive to prove they don't work. Nonprescription drugs must be effective, not just safe.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. That's complete horseshit. They produced a drug of known, unvarying dosage in regulated pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, overseen by pharmaceutical engineers making sure that no illegal or unsafe substances adulterated the final product. For once, there was a drug on the street that wouldn't cause junkies to overdose. It wasn't hot with fentanyl half the time. Jackasses didn't cut it with baby formula or laxatives. Hell, it didn't even encourage druggies to reuse needles. But if you need empirical evidence, drug overdose deaths only spike after the DEA cracks down on pill mills. They demonstrably saved lives. Any sane person who examines this at even a shallow level would concur. You've drank the kool-aid.

janice1999 2y ago

You're really underselling it if anything. Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. That more than any of their wars, including their civil war.

mktemp-d 2y ago
A good book to read regarding this topic is "Death in Mud Lick" by Eric Eyre who was a reporter for a local newspaper in WV during the early discovery phase of the epidemic. The book details the methods used by the drug companies to pedal these drugs into small communities, the tragic victims, and lastly the refusal of drug suppliers to admit any wrong doing. There's also a slight dose (no pun intended) of WV AG's sheer incompetence on the matter due to donations and gifts by said drug suppliers. Super depressing book, but great read nonetheless.
- checkyoursudo 2y ago
  *peddle
  - disillusioned 2y ago
    Fun fact: early opioid deliveries were actually, in fact, almost exclusively done by bicycle!
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      If they used those penny farthing bicycles I’m sure they needed quite a few painkillers.
- mptest 2y ago
  Painkiller is a great little short series on them too. does a great job at portraying all of what you mention in a six hour tv format. it can get a little on the nose sometimes but the meat is 100% true
treflop 2y ago
Not to mention creating more homelessness, increasing crime and deteriorating our cities, strengthening Mexican drug cartels, providing business to suppliers in China. They have objectively made the world a worst place. I thought the lead guy was bad.
sneak 2y ago
7x as many people in the US die from cigarettes every hour, day, week, month, and year as from all opioids combined. Cigarettes don’t even require a prescription. If there is an opioid crisis, there is a 7x larger tobacco crisis, too.
- jhgvh 2y ago
  Tobacco companies have paid out countless nine figure sums, smoking in public has gone from universal to mostly illegal, cig taxes have skyrocketed, etc… Tobacco has been treated as a crisis, and I have no doubt that if cigarettes had been invented by one specific family, that family would be hated. Weird that you don’t know any of this.
  - brobdingnag_pp 2y ago
    What’s weird is that people still think tobacco smoking is about nicotine being addictive and dangerous, when it is literally everything else in the smoke that makes it extremely addictive and mortally dangerous.
    - jhgvh 2y ago
      Can you please tell me which of these mandatory warning messages you feel fails to convey that cigarette smoke, on the whole, is dangerous? https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/labeling-and-warning-statements-tobacco-products/cigarette-labeling-and-health-warning-requirements https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/labeling-and-warning-st...
    - boxed 2y ago
      The nicotine is what makes it addictive, but everything else makes it deadly. This distinction is well known here in Sweden where we have snus, and also lower rates of lung cancer and cigarette use than the rest of Europe by a LOT.
      - daemin 2y ago
        Though at the same time I would wager a larger rate of gum disease and mouth cancer than the rest of Europe by a lot.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Over a million Americans have died so far in the opioid epidemic. Which of those million died from Oxycontin overdoses, which of them died from hepatitis they caught when shooting up pills with a reused drug needle?
- juliusgeo 2y ago
  That’s a good question. You should do some research. Maybe you can ask the families of the victims?
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    Don't have to. Virtually none. People die from the street heroin they bought as a substitute for the oxy they couldn't get once the DEA cracked down. You can see it on every fucking graph, the very week that the DEA did this, if the dates have enough resolution. This is why we don't ask "the families of the victims", because you're irrational with grief and can't process what the problem is.
    - dathayron 2y ago
      In America, if I shot you in the leg and you died years later from an infection incurred because of that bullet wound I can and likely would be charged with murder because of the long string of consequence caused by my action. So I can draw a pretty solid causal line from “my father died in a tent in the woods behind a gas station off of I-95 to the Oxy he was once on.” Maybe the pill itself didn’t directly kill him but it sure lead there. Perhaps I’m just too emotional here, having literally dealt with the above last month. Can’t think straight?
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        > if I shot you in the leg and you died years later from an infection incurred because of that bullet wound I can and likely would be charged with murder because of the long string of consequence caused by my action. Which is a useful convention, because it deters the sort of violence as "shooting people in legs". The analogy doesn't hold. Drug warriors like yourself murdered the OD junkies. Your policy murders, and somehow you perceive yourself as the overburdened heroes. Prohibition is a bizarre policy, and we don't prosecute beer brewers for drunk driving deaths, no matter how addicted the alcoholic was. You're a bad person. You make the world more miserable than it has to be with nothing more than your evil opinions. And nothing I can say will ever convince you of the truth. > Perhaps I’m just too emotional here, having literally dealt with the above last month. You're not just emotional, but irrational. I and others like me could fix the things that make you hurt, but you want more of the same. It is not the sadist who screams "the beatings will continue", it is masochists like yourself who beg for it, telling all involved their morale really will improve.

austin-cheney 2y ago

Maybe, but its more common than this one example and more than what most people can stomach. The real problem is these people are sociopaths, and the next set of sociopaths will do it again. They don't care who they hurt because they lack empathy and if killing people drives up profits then so be it. If you really want to show concern or right a wrong then find a way to better criminalize violations of accepted ethical norms. The best way to punish sociopaths is to take all their assets, embarrass them in public, and permanently bar them from practicing in the same industry. For example if a lawyer is disbarred they do not get a second chance.

FpUser 2y ago
>" better criminalize violations of accepted ethical norms" What a load of BS. Wat's next ? Burning witches? I think we are way over our heads with criminalization already and have created big underclass of people who have no second chance because of that. So no fuck you. P.S. Sure I'd like to see many of our masters in jail for fucking up with people's lives but that will not happen
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  There is no criminal underclass of convicted billionaire sociopaths. What are you talking about? Of course it won't happen if we continue to permit, excuse, and enable their behavior while crying about how hard life is.
  - FpUser 2y ago
    >"There is no criminal underclass of convicted billionaire sociopaths" To that I agree. However you can not make laws specifically criminalizing rich for "violations of accepted ethical norms". It will just open floodgates diverting regular and poor to underclass. This whole criminal background check should be made illegal with some very specific exceptions. It hunts people for the rest of their lives. Europe handles this situation much better in general from what I've heard.
    - 2y ago

addicted 2y ago

I’d argue it’s the opposite. Look at what’s happened since Oxycontin was heavily regulated. Opioid deaths in America have exploded by an order of magnitude. There’s a direct correlation between higher regulation of OxyContin and opioid deaths in the U.S. The Sacklers have done illegal stuff. Misrepresenting the addictiveness of their drugs (well, it was immoral and wrong…it’s not clear how illegal it was). But it’s quite clear that America had a parallel opioid crisis going on. By making OxyContin easily available, ie, a slow acting opioid (it had to be crushed to be fast acting) that was produced legitimately and had a legitimate supply chain so people were able to get exactly what they wanted, Purdue Pharma helped keep the number of opioid deaths under control. IOW, the U.S. has had an addiction crisis that is independent of prescription drugs whose cause is not clear yet because everyone has thrown the blame on Oxy instead of researching it. This is the same kind of drug crisis that hit inner cities in the 20th century but has hit rural areas in the 21st century. By providing easy access to regulated and legitimate opioids the Sacklers may have marginally worsened the addiction crisis, but they minimized the number of deaths and severe negative impacts. The moment Oxy and the other opioids were made less easy to get, the underlying drug crisis hadn’t gone anywhere, so instead the people suffering from the crisis had to get their opioids from illicit sources as opposed to the pharmacy, exposing them to all sorts of unregulated drugs that had all sorts of nonsense like Fenranyl mixed in, which causes the actual negative impacts of the drug crisis to explode. The funny thing is that when the entire country was just absolutely united at making the Sacklers the big bad evil, the actual people working on the ground trying to help those who were facing this drug crisis were predicting this exact situation and were asking authorities to not clamp down on Oxy. But they were all ignored and so we have a situation where opioid OD deaths have gone from a consistent 10-15,000/year (a rate which preceded Oxy) to about 50,000/yr now.

sailingparrot 2y ago
Sure, OxyContin is better than Fentanyl, and banning Oxy can push people to way more dangerous opioids. But before painting Purdue as a hero of the people, let’s remember that million of people were pushed to opioids through Oxy when they shouldn’t have in the first place. Purdue played a big part in creating the epidemic in the first place. People that are now pushed to harder drugs because of an addiction they got into for the sake of Purdue making more dough.

api 2y ago

Don't forget McKinsey: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids...

geodel 2y ago
I mean they were just leveraging synergies between drug company and drug regulator.
pembrook 2y ago
I always cringe whenever I see people giving McKinsey credit for stuff (good or bad). It's a powerpoint factory of 20-somethings with zero experience executing anything. To suggest the virtuous, humble Purdue management could never have figured out how to sell oxycontin and bend regulators--without the insight of a few powerpoint slides--gives me a chuckle. It's not like Purdue, a drug company, had any experience marketing drugs and dealing with regulators before, right? I mean, it must have been a super hard problem for them to solve. How do you sell an instant painkiller thats wildly addictive, while getting corrupt regulators to be corrupted? Impossible! Too bad they got duped by those evil 22-year old powerpoint geniuses at McKinsey, who are clearly the real villains of the story.
- freetanga 2y ago
  You might be partially right, but McKinsey Senior Partners have a very long list of friends to call, many of them former McKinseys in positions of power. So while the shitty PowerPoint might seem as the product, the actual product might be trafficking influences and coordinating favors, getting insider information from a competitor, etc. In this case in particular, if memory serves, they were advising the FDA in parallel, and leaking information to the Purdues. No brain-dead 24yo Harvard grad did that. I would not give them any slack.
  - tgv 2y ago
    They also provide plausible deniability. "Look, we have independent research by a reputable firm."

elphinstone 2y ago

They all should be charged with mass murder. The corrupt judge who okayed the settlement deserves prison.

bookaway 2y ago
Just after the decision was announced, the victim's lawyers seemed to put out a statement decrying the decision since the victims are not going to be paid (soon?). Is this overzealousness on the part of the lawyers themselves wanting to get paid? Does any law person have a comment on the situation?
criddell 2y ago
Manslaughter maybe, but not murder. They didn't want to kill people using their drugs. That wouldn't make any sense. Also, I'd be careful about saying the judge (Robert Drain) is corrupt unless you can back that up with facts. You might be opening yourself up to a libel suit.

lenerdenator 2y ago

I like to think about it this way: I cannot name another family that helped introduce a nationwide need for a completely new type of first aid, that being naloxone. It's not just ambulances; it's in police cars, pharmacies, libraries, schools, and workplaces. A complete deployment throughout the third-largest society in the world, in less than ten years, because of the frequency of overdose. Just consider that for a moment.

walterbell 2y ago
Gabapentoids (e.g. pregabalin, gabapentin) need similar scrutiny, as they are routinely prescribed to millions of elderly people, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265598/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265598/ > gabapentinoids are increasingly being used for off-label conditions despite the lack of evidence. Prescription rates for off-label conditions have overtaken that for on-label use. Similarly, the use of gabapentinoids in the perioperative period is now embedded in clinical practice despite conflicting evidence. This article summarises the risks associated with this increasing use. There is increasing evidence of the potential to cause harm in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and increasing prevalence of abuse. The risk of respiratory depression in combination with opioids is of particular concern in the context of the current opioid crisis.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Where was the FDA? Were the doctors all innocent? Is stupidity a good criminal defense? They should be all in the same cell.

Retric 2y ago
FDA has some culpability, but the fraud was so effective Medical Schools where teaching students to prescribe more opioids. Perdue Pharma effectively hacked the medical system. I think the real takeaway is there’s likely more of this going on than we realize. The common decongestant phenylephrine being no more effective than placebo comes to mind. Without the mass deaths there’s apparently little to stop modern snake oil salesman. Perhaps the FDA needs to conduct direct hands on oversight of medical trials? I mean if there’s billions to be made and little chance of prison the incentives get crazy.
- rallison 2y ago
  There is a phenomenal article in Scientific American talking about the phenylephrine/pseudoephedrine debacle: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacists-figured-out-that-decongestants-dont-work/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacis... It's sort of a different class of failure than with opioids, but it is a notable area of weakness. Basically, for OTC drugs that were initially approved before 1962, many are still on the market despite sometimes having weak efficacy data. While the FDA has been making some progress in reevaluating these older drugs, we're still far from where we should be. A few quotes from the conclusion of the article (but the entire piece I linked in SA is worth a read!): > In 2023, 16 external experts on the second Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee looked at all the evidence compiled by FDA staff, heard manufacturers' arguments in favor of oral phenylephrine's efficacy, and heard from experts like me who argued that oral phenylephrine is ineffective. In the end, they concluded that oral phenylephrine is not GRASE. A final ruling on whether decongestants containing the drug can still be sold will take time. We hope science will prevail. > From this experience we've learned that the monograph process for OTC drugs approved before 1962 needs to be reexamined. Systematic reviews of the available evidence indicate that other nonprescription drugs such as guaifenesin (sold in Mucinex and Robitussin), dextromethorphan (sold in Robitussin DM) and antihistamines marketed for colds (for instance, chlorpheniramine) probably don't help with coughs and colds. They are usually not dangerous, but their effects are likely to be the result of a placebo response; more modern research is needed. > The outcome for oral phenylephrine shows that the FDA needs more funding to look at old drugs. We need public funds to support independent researchers who want to examine these products objectively. The government should be able to spend millions to save consumers billions on ineffective products. Companies that market these products have no incentive to prove they don't work. Nonprescription drugs must be effective, not just safe.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

> Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. That's complete horseshit. They produced a drug of known, unvarying dosage in regulated pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, overseen by pharmaceutical engineers making sure that no illegal or unsafe substances adulterated the final product. For once, there was a drug on the street that wouldn't cause junkies to overdose. It wasn't hot with fentanyl half the time. Jackasses didn't cut it with baby formula or laxatives. Hell, it didn't even encourage druggies to reuse needles. But if you need empirical evidence, drug overdose deaths only spike after the DEA cracks down on pill mills. They demonstrably saved lives. Any sane person who examines this at even a shallow level would concur. You've drank the kool-aid.