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Let's compare to Purdue and the Sacklers, shall we? Purdue owns a huge piece of the responsibility for the opioid epidemic. They created OxyContin and lied abo

by jmyeet 1y ago

Let's compare to Purdue and the Sacklers, shall we? Purdue owns a huge piece of the responsibility for the opioid epidemic. They created OxyContin and lied about it's addictiveness. They are probably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at this point. The Sacklers were heavily involved in all aspects of this and became billionaires because of it. Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years, which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains. Last I heard an appeals court said no, you can't do that and release liability. This really was a slap on the wrist. Now compare this to what China does [1][2][3]. Remember how all those people went to jail for mortgage fraud after 2008? Oh wait... And now? We just sell pardons [4]. This sort of thing used to cause a scandal (eg [5]). [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes... [2]: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/nx-s1-5308604/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-returns-5-years-after-largely-disappearing-from-public-view https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/nx-s1-5308604/alibaba-founder... [3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45728459 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45728459 [4]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-flurry-pardons-include-campaign-contributors/story?id=122313284 https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-flurry-pardons-include-camp... [5]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-shadow-of-marc-rich https://www.propublica.org/article/the-shadow-of-marc-rich

Isamu 1y ago
I agree there can be better accountability but China is not a shining example of anti-corruption, there it is used to destroy your political enemies and to increase your political power. Here the issue is probably that the political parties shield their rich donors.
gruez 1y ago
>Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? It doesn't grant them immunity over any criminal claims. It's more correct to say that they didn't bother prosecuting them criminally (possibly because it's hard to do so), and got a civil settlement instead because the evidentiary standards are lower. > which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains. They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue-s-bankruptcy-went-too-far https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...
- pton_xd 1y ago
  > They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered. Paying $6B out of $11B earned from literally killing hundreds of thousands of people. Meanwhile Alex Jones receives a $1.5B judgement (against ~$10 mil in assets) for just harassing people that were killed? Even involuntary manslaughter comes with years of jail time. Recklessly killing a single human being. Willfully destroying thousands? Nah, just give us some of the money you earned and we're square. How does this make sense? This is an extreme injustice no matter how you look at it. The Sacklers deserve far, far worse.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Meanwhile Alex Jones receives a $1.5B judgement (against ~$10 mil in assets) You answered your own question. $10M doesn't buy a lot of lawyering. $11B Does. Moreover Alex Jones was dumb and did his misdeeds in a way that makes it a slam dunk to sue him in court. The linked article above mentions why suing the Sacklers is much tougher: >How are you going to get the Sacklers to give up all their money? You could sue them, sure, of course. The entity that is most obvious liable for the opioid crisis is Purdue, the company, which is very bankrupt, but you can probably find some causes of action to sue the Sacklers. For one thing, some Sacklers were executives or board members of Purdue, so you could sue them personally for their own actions running Purdue. (But not all of them were.) For another thing, there are arguments under the bankruptcy code that they should not have been able to extract $11 billion from the company while it was facing all this opioid liability, that the dividends they got were “fraudulent transfers” and can be clawed back by the company. >There are problems with all of this. There are a lot of Sacklers. They can hire good lawyers. Some of them live abroad. Much of their money is in trusts that a US court might not be able to get access to. If you sued all of them, it would be expensive and time-consuming and you might not get much money. You might! And you might at least make life very unpleasant for them, which has its own virtues. Finally, the supreme court votes show how divided the justices were. Contrary to the popular expectation that Republicans are pro-business, they were actually the ones voting against the settlement. The justices voting against the settlement were Trump, HW Bush, W Bush, Trump, and Biden appointees; justices voting for the settlement were Trump, W Bush, Obama, and Obama appointees.
cluckindan 1y ago
Heroin was originally advertised by Bayer as a safe and nonaddictive treatment for morphine dependency.

by jmyeet 1y ago

Isamu 1y ago

I agree there can be better accountability but China is not a shining example of anti-corruption, there it is used to destroy your political enemies and to increase your political power. Here the issue is probably that the political parties shield their rich donors.

gruez 1y ago

>Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? It doesn't grant them immunity over any criminal claims. It's more correct to say that they didn't bother prosecuting them criminally (possibly because it's hard to do so), and got a civil settlement instead because the evidentiary standards are lower. > which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains. They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue-s-bankruptcy-went-too-far https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...

pton_xd 1y ago
> They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered. Paying $6B out of $11B earned from literally killing hundreds of thousands of people. Meanwhile Alex Jones receives a $1.5B judgement (against ~$10 mil in assets) for just harassing people that were killed? Even involuntary manslaughter comes with years of jail time. Recklessly killing a single human being. Willfully destroying thousands? Nah, just give us some of the money you earned and we're square. How does this make sense? This is an extreme injustice no matter how you look at it. The Sacklers deserve far, far worse.
- gruez 1y ago
  >Meanwhile Alex Jones receives a $1.5B judgement (against ~$10 mil in assets) You answered your own question. $10M doesn't buy a lot of lawyering. $11B Does. Moreover Alex Jones was dumb and did his misdeeds in a way that makes it a slam dunk to sue him in court. The linked article above mentions why suing the Sacklers is much tougher: >How are you going to get the Sacklers to give up all their money? You could sue them, sure, of course. The entity that is most obvious liable for the opioid crisis is Purdue, the company, which is very bankrupt, but you can probably find some causes of action to sue the Sacklers. For one thing, some Sacklers were executives or board members of Purdue, so you could sue them personally for their own actions running Purdue. (But not all of them were.) For another thing, there are arguments under the bankruptcy code that they should not have been able to extract $11 billion from the company while it was facing all this opioid liability, that the dividends they got were “fraudulent transfers” and can be clawed back by the company. >There are problems with all of this. There are a lot of Sacklers. They can hire good lawyers. Some of them live abroad. Much of their money is in trusts that a US court might not be able to get access to. If you sued all of them, it would be expensive and time-consuming and you might not get much money. You might! And you might at least make life very unpleasant for them, which has its own virtues. Finally, the supreme court votes show how divided the justices were. Contrary to the popular expectation that Republicans are pro-business, they were actually the ones voting against the settlement. The justices voting against the settlement were Trump, HW Bush, W Bush, Trump, and Biden appointees; justices voting for the settlement were Trump, W Bush, Obama, and Obama appointees.

cluckindan 1y ago

Heroin was originally advertised by Bayer as a safe and nonaddictive treatment for morphine dependency.