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In the US opioid-maker Purdue is bankrupt. Its global counterparts make millions
- yieldcrv 2y agoIts US liabilities and creditors exceed its US assets Bankrupt doesn't mean you don't have any money, it means someone else sorts out whats in that particular bucket of assets I’m not familiar with what people actually want to occur or how it makes sense, I feel like its a derivative of prosperity preaching where a code of behavior is rewarded with wealth and therefore opposing behavior is punished with no wealth for an arbitrary indefinite time period, but I don’t see anything supporting that in all of history
- solardev 2y agoDon't people just want things like this to pierce the corporate veil so the Sacklers could be individually prosecuted, and probably put away for life?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI’ve wondered about this too. On the one hand there are situations that deserve it. On the other hand I can see it opening up a new uncertainty for business. How do you draw the line?
- solardev 2y agoMurderous intent seems like a pretty easy line...? If you know your product is unsafe and then proceed to sell it anyway, well, it's hard to have sympathy for your moral ambiguity.
- fragmede 2y agoHow unsafe? Cars are rolling death machines, especially to pedestrians, but we sell plenty of them anyway. I don't have particular sympathy for Ford or Honda, but I think they should continue to exist.
- pixl97 2y agoWith cars they go under testing certification that defines their safety level, which is readily available. In this particular drug case they fraudulently misrepresented the risks of the product.
- fragmede 2y agoSurely you're not implying that auto manufacturers have never misrepresented anything about their products, and gotten into legal trouble because of it.
- candiddevmike 2y agoI'm all for opening up new uncertainties for businesses. Especially when they involve criminal intent.
- advael 2y agoIt's quite strange to me that business leaders love talking about how they are being rewarded for taking risks when it's used to justify disproportionate executive pay and stock buybacks for investors, but in all discussions of economic and even criminal regulation surrounding businesses, a business being made to accept some liability for putting others at risk is considered too risky for business. At present, large swaths of the business world are heavily subsidized by the government, can write off operating losses on their taxes, are often funded by hedge funds and investors who don't seem to mind them being deeply unprofitable for many years, and hold things like the IP rights produced by any worker they've employed as a treasure trove of potential value to sell off for the benefit of the owners should the business fail. On top of that, we must also believe that it's good and right that it is nearly impossible to prosecute any actual decision-maker within a company for criminal conduct done or harm caused by that company, or else business is just too risky and the economy might collapse? To me this doesn't even warrant consideration, it's ridiculous on its face and perverts the notion of rule of law
- jiggawatts 2y agoThe Sacklers made enough money to have some left over for bri.. political contributions. They’re permanently immune to personal consequences now.
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago> nearly impossible to prosecute any actual decision-maker Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/minnesota-executives-sentenced-prison-orchestrating-multimillion-dollar-fraud-schemes https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/minnesota-executives-sent... https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-biotech-executive-sentenced-7-years-jail-covid-test-fraud-2024-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-biotech-executive-sentenced...
- advael 2y agoYes, nearly impossible as I said before. The "nearly" qualifier acknowledges that this does sometimes nonetheless happen
- howard941 2y agoI don't know about that but what's going on is the court is rejecting what the Sacklers want, which is getting out of the civil liability claims against Purdue. You can do that if the bankruptcy plan provides for co-debtor stays. Sometimes the co-debtors get approved with it, sometimes not. In this case? Not.
- GeekyBear 2y agoAfter the fraudulent marketing claiming that their formulation was non-adictive, I certainly want to see the profits from Oxycontin clawed back from the Sackler family.
- hedora 2y agoFraudulent marketing was the least of what they did. Among other things, they set the recommended dosage and timing to maximize addictiveness (by repeatedly making the patients high, and then putting them in withdrawal).
- bigtones 2y agoArchived version: https://archive.li/VY7F3 https://archive.li/VY7F3
- loeg 2y agoOpioids continue to be over-vilified. They're very useful and beneficial drugs.
- loufe 2y agoWhat makes you say "over-villified"? They are a very dangerous yet effective tool, true. However, Western society is still reeling from the opiod crisis. I have a hard time feeling like it's over-villified, from my perspective it is only now feeling appropriately villified.
- dyauspitr 2y agoWell we’re just recovering from a phase where they were overprescribed so there’s a natural overvilification. Lots of people that do need opioids for their pain are now getting refused.
- loeg 2y agoThey've been underprescribed for probably a decade now. We started overcorrecting long, long ago. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm#:~:text=Nationally%2C%20opioid%20prescribing%20rates%20leveled,the%20risks%20associated%20with%20opioids https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm#:~:text=.... > First, average daily MME per prescription decreased after 2010, both nationwide and in most counties. The largest decreases occurred from 2010 to 2012, following publication of two national guidelines defining high-dose opioid prescribing as >200 MME/day (15,16). ... Nationally, opioid prescribing rates leveled off from 2010 to 2012, and then decreased by 13.1% from 2012 to 2015. ... This pattern, along with the trends in overall numbers of opioid prescriptions, might reflect fewer patients initiated on opioid therapy after 2012...
- dyauspitr 2y agoHas it really been that long? It feels like the opioid epidemic was not that long ago.
- legitster 2y agoThat's the weirdest thing about this whole saga. Opioids are not illegal, they haven't been removed from insurance or Medicare coverage, and doctors are still free to over-prescribe them with little to no repercussions. It's kind of like if Ford got sued out of existence for every traffic death, but every other manufacturer got to keep making cars.
- rqtwteye 2y agoFord should get sued out of existence if they knowingly shipped defective cars while internally knowing that their cars kill people. The Purdue people knew that their public statements about the addictiveness of Oxycontin were wrong.
- appendix-rock 2y agoI’ve got the beginning of a movie staring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt that you might be interested in.
- fragmede 2y agoYou mean the Ford Pinto case that was actually real, and lead to 27 deaths? https://medium.com/@GallowayJefcoat/tyler-durden-was-right-about-car-recalls-d7fe8a6c9586 https://medium.com/@GallowayJefcoat/tyler-durden-was-right-a...
- jaggederest 2y agoPurdue is responsible for somewhere between a quarter million and half a million excess deaths due to opiates. It's a shocking number. The Pinto scandal is rightfully notorious, but this is a different order of magnitude.
- jart 2y agoOnly if you believe people aren't responsible for their own actions. Pintos would explode when you're rear-ended due to fuel tank defects. Opioids won't kill you if you take them as your doctor prescribes. Cars in general are a dangerous thing though. Even when they're built to generally accepted standards, they kill about as many people per year as opioids. Just like there's people who abuse drugs, there's drivers who drive recklessly. However, unlike abusing opioids, driving recklessly will kill others.
- rqtwteye 2y agoThe only way to deal with this is to go after the execs personally who are responsible for corporate wrongdoing.
- phil21 2y agoHow about the doctors? Every single one knew oxycontin was addictive. That they have a convenient scapegoat does not absolve them. In fact I place far more culpability on them and their medical licenses than I do a pharmaceutical company making laughably obvious false claims. Not a single doctor I personally knew at the time thought these drugs were non-addictive. That the narrative has shifted so much is an utter joke. I know friends ran out of the industry due to pushing back. If you go after the sacklers, you need to go after every single doctor and related medical care professional who was involved in the over prescribing of these drugs. That would be difficult and expose the wide-scale fraud that is the medical establishment. This stuff is a simple scapegoat for society to blame an extremely complex and endemic societal issue on while pretending "no one knew!". Bullshit. Some of us have not forgotten.
- 486sx33 2y agoI sort of liked the purity of Percocet if only it hadn’t been so loaded with Tylenol. Why not make a pure 5mg opioid and lemmon Quaaludes again ?
- floydnoel 2y agowell you can guess why. but i agree with you